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May252012
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Top Team at Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship Ineligible
Tough break for record-setting team and their bass fishing catch on Pickwick
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Yesterday at the BoatUS Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship on Pickwick Lake, Cameron Trousdale and Trevor Miller of Calhoun Community College were on top of the world after posting a record setting weight of 26.61 pounds of Pickwick bass, the largest one day stringer of bass in a BoatUS Collegiate bass fishing championship. Today they probably feel like the carcasses of fish left behind at a fish cleaning station on the lake. The emotional roller coaster of tournament bass fishing is hard enough to stomach, let alone when you deem yourself ineligible and report yourself knowing you'll be knocked off your pedestal.
Trousdale and Miller did a self-evaluation and review of the rules once again after posting a huge tournament leading limit that day. They got tripped up with the "full-time" student part. For whatever reason, they had never realized that they were not full-time students because both have just been taking enough hours to prepare themselves to move on to a four-year university. Because they are not deemed full-time students they don't meet the BoatUS qualifications of being a full-time college student and subsequently turned themselves in.
“After some of the interview questions regarding majors, future plans,
our school, and our community college status, Trevor and I got to
thinking about everything," Trousdale said. "We’re both pursuing degrees through Calhoun
Community College and consider ourselves college students, but we’ll
likely be transferring, so we’ve only been taking the courses we need,
and working those into our schedule around our jobs. By our own schools
definition, our current course-load doesn’t meet the minimum requirement
to satisfy 'full-time' status.
“I’m sick over this one. We’ve been thinking about this event since it
was announced and we’ve both been active in our club since it started,
so we feel like true college fishermen, but we didn’t go through the
rules and definitions like we should have. We accept full
responsibility for our mistake and decided to catch it before it caused
any more problems for us, our teammates, and Calhoun Community College’s
fishing team.”
Remarkably enough, even with the massive 26.61 pound limit being removed from the results, Calhoun Community College still leads the championship as the second place team was Lealand Johnson and James Osmer, also of Calhoun Community College. Their lead is only about 5 ounces though over the now second place team from Tennessee Tech, Joe Slagle and Matt Clay.
For full standings, more about the wild first day, lots of photos and other coverage from the 180-team event, visit collegiatebasschampionship.com.
Editor's Note: There are things we like about college fishing and things we don't. Integrity has a lot to do with the things we don't. To take yourself out of contention in a tournament you were on pace to win because you don't feel you followed the rules to a "T" show a real integrity that is missing with a lot of college teams. Kudos to them for having that integrity. Your integrity will last you a lot longer in life and fishing than a college win will.
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