When coming to college, some students join club sports to meet new people. Students expect to see basketball, soccer, rugby or others, but Marshall University offers a wide range of club sports, like the Bass Fishing team.

The Bass Fishing team is one of the many club sports offered on campus. As a sport some would not even realize is a club sport offered at Marshall, the team’s president said he is always looking to reel in more students.

Team president, sophomore Chase Sansom, said the Bass Fishing team started at Marshall in 2015. The team has qualified for two national championships through the fishing League Worldwide, FLW, within the five years of its existence; College National Championship and Bassmaster College National Championship. Sansom and his teammate sophomore Tyler Drown were the ones who qualified for the Bassmaster College National Championship.

“We qualified by finishing second in the West Virginia Bassmaster College State Championship,” said Sansom.

Sansom said he and his team fundraise and get financial assistance from sponsors in order to get the funding to participate in these tournaments.

“The guys on the team and myself organize a fundraiser tournament trail we hold at local lakes around campus,” he said.

Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, the team could not go to tournaments and fish.

“Spring is when most of our tournaments are because that is the best time to be fishing for bass,” Sansom said. “We are just wanting to get back into tournament fishing and everything back to normal.”

The Marshall University Bass Fishing team is not just a local club sport. The team gets to travel to a plethora of different tournaments, especially as of last year. In February, right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the team traveled to Lewis Smith Lake in Alabama. Sansom said the team struggled a bit in the tournament, but it was a great experience for all of them to fish in a location they would not normally visit.

“After all this crazy stuff clears, we have scheduled three more Bassmaster College Tournaments,” Sansom said.

The team has three tournaments remaining as it will travel to Lake Hartwell in South Carolina, Lake Cumberland in Kentucky and then will have its final tournament at Summersville Lake. The team will try to qualify once again for a National Championship with those three tournaments.

Sansom said he and the rest of his team of anglers hope this pandemic clears up quickly so that the team can get back to reeling in some trophy bass.

Alexandra Warrington can be contacted at [email protected].