The Oregon bass fishing team has paid their dues.
When the team was created in 2005, founders Chris Parks and Gergor Crowl would load a Smart Car — just big enough for the two of them — with fishing poles, tackle gear and the bare essentials two good ol’ boys would need.
With their bodies contorted into less-than-comfortable positions, they would set off to wherever the next bass fishing tournament was being held. That often meant traveling hundreds, if not thousands of miles.
Why would they do this — for fishing nonetheless?
“We just love to fish,” said Reed Frazier, who is in his fourth and final year on the team.
Parks and Crowl founded the club thinking it would provide them with just another excuse to fish. But it has now become one of the most successful collegiate bass fishing teams on the West Coast. And with upwards of $40,000 in prize money earned in the last two years, the club — now consisting of 20 anglers — has been able to afford to trade in the Smart Car for plane tickets when traveling to distant tournaments.
“It’s a pretty good feeling knowing that when I first got here we were having six-guy tournaments,” said team president Ross Richards. “It was a real small club. Now with the FLW (Forrest L. Wood) tournaments and all the press that everyone’s been giving us, it’s just kind of exploded.”
The team traveled to Lake Shasta in mid-January for the first FLW tournament of the 2011 season. It was there that William Crowl, younger brother of Gregor Crowl, and Kyle Schneider, competing in his first tournament, captured the team’s first-ever first-place finish. Not only that, Oregon earned two top-five finishes as Nick Doring and Zachary Niesen finished in fourth place.
“The only thing eluding us the past two years was a FLW first place (finish),” Richards said after the tournament. “Now that we have that monkey off our backs, hopefully we can get a few more.”
It wouldn’t take long to win again.
At the second tournament of the year at Lake Roosevelt, Ariz., in February, Richards and Frazier took home a first-place finish. The team just missed placing two teams in the top five once again, as their finish knocked William Crowl and Doring from fifth to sixth place — and cost them $2,000 in prize money.
Today, Oregon isn’t sneaking under anyone’s radar as its success has earned notoriety, sponsorships and a bull’s-eye among other collegiate teams.
“I think there’s definitely a target on our back after winning the first two (tournaments),” Frazier said. “People look at the results year in and year out, and have a lot of respect for our team.”
The team has also gained the attention of up-and-coming anglers looking to attend Oregon because of the school’s bass program. Word of the team’s reputation has spread to the next generation of fishermen, turning the school into a hub for young, talented anglers looking to compete at the next level.
“We’ve had a lot of people contact us from high school — die-hard fishermen,” Frazier said. “They’re coming to Oregon because of bass fishing. They know we’re a respected team, and they’re factoring that into their college choices.
“It’s pretty cool to see and know that people will be continuing to have success at Oregon.”
With the growth of the team, not all members are able to fish every tournament. FLW has a limit on the number of anglers a team can enter, so Oregon’s choice of who to send has always come down to seniority.
But that could soon be changing, as the new members are bringing a level of talent that has caught the attention of the team’s veteran fishermen. Soon the competition may not be limited to just tournaments. The team has discussed holding tournaments within the program to decide who will represent the school at tournaments.
“It’s probably going to become a lot more competitive next year within the team as far as sending people to FLW,” Frazier said.
Currently, Richards finalizes decisions like those, but by next season, William Crowl will inherit presidential duties as he follows in his brother’s footsteps.
Asked whether he feels pressure of becoming the president, Crowl said, “Definitely a little bit, since my brother started it and Ross (Richards) and Reed (Frazier) and Nick (Doring) have done a good job of keeping it going this far.”
Achieving the team’s final hurdle will also come under the watch of Crowl. As a team, they have won tournaments and qualified for regionals, but a national championship still eludes them.
That responsibility falls on Crowl and the other anglers of the future. But with seemingly too much talent on one team, they could be creating a dynasty.
“Being successful kind of sets the bar that much higher,” Crowl said. “So now we need to win a national tournament — not just get there. So (I’m) just trying to keep pushing it on to the next step. I don’t want to let all their hard work die when I take over. I want to ensure the future, basically.”
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