Growth of high school fishing could lead to programs starting in West Orange

It may come as a surprise to some, but “competitive high-school fishing” is more than just a mash-up of words.

It’s an actual thing. 

There are teams, state championships — including one here in Florida at Lake Toho near Kissimmee — and even a national championship. Although it is a club sport in most states, including Florida, it is a sanctioned high school sport in Illinois and Kentucky.

It’s growing, with the Student Angler Federation — an organization that is a part of the larger Bass Federation — growing particularly well in Florida. The organization held its fifth annual state championship event Feb. 28.

Mark Gintert, the national youth director for TBF who also plans and executes all of the organization’s state championships, has watched the Florida event evolve from a nine-team inaugural tournament to just fewer than 50 teams this spring.

“From that initial start, that initial nine-team tournament (in 2011), we’ve been growing slowly but surely,” Gintert said. “There’s no reason why Florida can’t catch up (with states with larger events).”

The states Gintert is referencing are places such as Tennessee, which had 125 teams for its most recent state championship, and Arkansas, which had 117 teams.

One of the key areas for the sport’s growth is Central Florida. 

Already, programs have popped up in four of the five counties bordering Orange County. Bartow High School has a program in Polk County, Lake Minneola and Montverde have anglers in Lake County, Oviedo High School has a program in Seminole County, and there is large club in Osceola County that supports several schools.

All of which raises the question: Is Orange County, and more specifically, West Orange County, the next place for high-school fishing to bud?

“I don’t see why not; I’m actually surprised it hasn’t,” said Lamar Chisholm, director for the Osceola Anglers High School Fishing Club. “We go up there (to West Orange) and fish the Butler Chain. Our kids love going up there and fishing.”

The proximity of the Butler Chain and other well-known fishing lakes in and around West Orange County, to schools such as Olympia, West Orange, Ocoee, Dr. Phillips and Windermere Prep is similar to one of the reasons Chisholm started the program in Osceola.

“The state championship is held in Lake Toho every year; I said, ‘That’s right here in Osceola County, and we don’t have anybody to represent us,’” Chisholm said. “It’s on our home turf, so let’s get it going.”

In Florida, teams are clubs and are not sanctioned by the FHSAA. Still, at schools where the sport has taken root, growth has been rapid. Gintert, who has been a witness to the sport’s rise, said it has a lot to do with its broad appeal.

“One of the greatest things about high-school fishing is it creates, in my mind, one of the most positive outlets for kids who aren’t already involved in high-school sports,” Gintert said, citing a study in Illinois that suggested six out of every 10 anglers was previously not involved in a sport on his or her respective campus.

“These were kids who were just kind of roaming the halls looking for something to do,” he said. “They were outdoor kids who might not have played baseball, basketball, football.”

The broad appeal is not limited to male students, either. Fifteen percent of the names in the Student Angler Federation’s database are female. 

“It really gives them an opportunity to participate with the boys on an equal footing,” Gintert said.

All of that isn’t to say that traditional athletes haven’t taken to high-school fishing as a diversion or further competitive outlet, also.

“My first year, I had two defensive tackles and an offensive guard — high-football players — on my team; they were giants,” said Derek Boswell, who runs the program at Bartow. “Next to them is a 95-pound ninth-grader, and yet he can catch more fish and compete with those guys. … What I like about (high school fishing) is you don’t have to be big and strong to compete — that 95-pound freshman caught more fish, and he went home with the trophy.”

“We are able to get the students out in an environment and become better citizens understanding of our natural resources,” Boswell said. “Teaching our students about fish care or about vegetation that grows in our Kissimmee Chain, about what is a native plant and what is not.”

Then, of course, like so many other youth and high-school-age sports that have experienced growth, there is the college factor and scholarship dollars available.

“Most of your major universities now have a bass fishing team, and most of them now also give scholarship money to those individuals,” said Jason Foss, who runs the program at Oviedo High School. “I try to get (the kids) to see the big picture and see that, ‘You guys can really start looking at getting scholarship money from fishing.’”

Foss notes nearby UCF has one of the best college-fishing programs in the nation, and the four-year universities in the south have, particularly, taken to the sport.

Which, of course, brings us back to the question at hand — is West Orange and its high school a natural place for the sport to expand? 

Foss thinks so.

“Absolutely. The Butler Chain of Lakes … that’s probably my favorite lakes now to fish on,” Foss said. “I would assume that, with the amount of anglers in that general area, that it would pop up quickly.”

The former college baseball player and competitive fisher also has heard rumors of interest from parents.

“A friend of mine who does some stuff for a team out of Tampa, I guess at the last tournament there were some parents there from Olympia, and I think Windermere Prep — they were really interested in starting clubs at their school,” Foss said, adding he has had casual conversations with people from nearby Wekiva High School and Ocoee High School about starting programs.

All of this is music to the ears of somebody such as West Orange sophomore Dalton White — an avid angler already, who along with his buddies fishes every weekend.

“As soon as (a team) came to West Orange, I’d fish for it, and I’d be into it,” White said. “There’d be plenty of interest. … That would be awesome, representing my school and hometown.”

Should teams pop up in West Orange, they could be part of a Central Florida-specific league, something Chisholm said he and other coaches have been in preliminary discussions about.

As for the growth of the sport, nationally, Gintert said the proof is in the numbers.

“We have gone from zero to (more than) 13,000 high-school anglers nationwide in our database,” Gintert said. “That number is growing every day. We get about 15 requests a day for information on high-school fishing. We think the sky is the limit for this.”

—

College fishing booms as cash prizes flow

If high-school fishing is growing rapidly, so is its big brother — college fishing.

There are more than 600 bass fishing clubs at campuses around the nation. One of the reasons the sport has had such appeal and growth, as chronicled in a 2013 article in TIME Magazine, is that competitors can win cash and prizes. As cited in the article, the winner of the FLW Outdoors National Championship in April 2013, the University of Louisiana at Monroe’s team, took home a $27,000 bass boat and $3,000 in cash. As a club sport, it is outside the NCAA’s regulations.

To learn more about a local college fishing team, the University of Central Florida’s “The Reel Knights,” visit ucffishingclub.weebly.com.

—

Interested in starting a team?

Mark Gintert, the national youth director for The Bass Federation, which runs the Student Angler Federation, encourages interested individuals to consult highschoolfishing.org for more information on starting a program. Locally, Jason Foss, the coach at Oviedo High School, and Derek Boswell, the coach at Bartow High School, both are passionate about growing the sport and can be contacted for advice on how to begin a program. Boswell can be reached via email at [email protected], and Foss can be reached at [email protected].

—

Contact Steven Ryzewski at [email protected].