Back in session

By: TONY MARKS
Editor

After floundering the past several years in a state of dormancy, the Sacred Heart fishing team reincarnated and is back competing in tournaments.
Now that it is back in session, the team wasted no time in finding renewed success on the open water. At the first tournament of the season, Austin West and Jake Ardoin won the regional championship and automatically qualified for the state tournament, which will be held March 13 and March 14.
West and Ardoin caught just 23 pounds and 6 ounces.
Other Trojan anglers found similar success in the first regional tournament, including Brecken Figueiredo and Nixon Doucet, who also automatically qualified for state.
The teammembers then competed in another regional tournament at Lake Darbonne yesterday for a chance to also qualify for the state tournament.
One of the new boat captains who worked to restart the program is Gerald Clark.
Clark said the new era of the team began after he expressed interest with the school’s principal, Dawn Shipp. He then circulated a sign-up sheet, and the team then gained enough members to qualify for competitions.
“It started real small but all inclusive,” he said. “There were no tryouts or anything.”
Initially, there were 12 members of the team and five boats. As Clark explained, the needed sixth boat came about “because one got motivated and went buy a boat.”
According to Clark, the team is comprised of students who are at different levels in their ability as anglers. “We have a couple really good anglers,” he said. “Then we have some anglers who are kind of what I call ‘fish with daddy anglers.’ They like it. They like to go. They like to participate. We’ve got a couple real good anglers, then we have some beginners.”
He continued, “We cover the entire spectrum of brand new starters to people who fish but it’s not 100% of what they do. And, then we’ve got some who are really into it and are very good at it.”
That spectrum allowed the team to grow in such a short amount of time. For some of the kids, fishing on the team is the first time they cast with an open face reel. “They need to learn,” Clark said, “and they are getting better at it.”
Many of the team’s members play other sports for Sacred Heart such as football, golf, baseball, and basketball. “But, for some of these kids, they don’t participate in any other sport,” Clark said. “This is their thing. We need to have as much stuff as we can humanly do to provide something they’re into.”
As Clark said, another important aspect of the fishing team is it provides more students an opportunity to wear the blue and gold colors. “They’re not football players, they’re not basketball players, and they’re not baseball players,” he commented, “but they want to represent their school just like every kid. We have to give them that opportunity, whether it’s chess club or the horseshoe team, I don’t care what it is. If they’re good at something, we need to showcase their talents in our little town.”
For Clark, he is like many of the parish’s residents who grew up interested in fishing. As he recalled, “There’s a lot more info out there. When I was growing up, there was Bassmaster magazine. That’s all there was. In the (Ville Platte) Gazette, you would look at the tournament results when they fished at Miller’s (Lake) or Chicot (Park). It was Dicky Parrott and Richard Feucht and Jerry Neal Ardoin who were the king fisherman around here.”
“So, now,” he continued, “there’s just way more with the Internet from learning techniques to learning about baits. It’s incredible. You can break down a lake with just an app on your phone.”
Another boat captain who helped bring back the team is Kris Aguillard. As he said, interest in the program fell off around the time of COVID-19. “There wasn’t anybody who was interested in fishing anymore,” he said.
Once the team restarted, Aguillard said the captains had to do a lot behind the scenes to get everything ready, including getting sponsorships and insurance for the boats.
For Aguillard, fishing gives kids another opportunity for things to do in the springtime. He said,
“Basketball is wrapping up. If you’re not playing baseball, then springtime is the spawn at Toledo Bend. So, it’s some of the best fishing in the world.”
Toledo Bend, according to Aguillard, was the host lake for the regional tournament. As he said, “We got a chance to stay at a couple of camps that were close together. So, we ate as a team, went to the weigh-in as a team, and just represented Sacred Heart like it needed to be represented with all six boats there.”
As Clark said, fishing in high school also provides kids with another opportunity to go to college and compete in the college fishing league. He said, “There’s people going to a certain college so they can fish,” he said, “and most of those kids are hoping that they can one day qualify to fish in the pros.”