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COMMUNITY NEWS
Bass fishing club catches on
If you happen to be out on one of Alabama’s fishing lakes this
spring, you may see something you don’t expect—BSC jerseys in one
of the boats.
Thanks to a small group of enterprising students, Birmingham-
Southern now has its own fishing club, joining part of a wider trend
nationwide in competitive collegiate fishing. What’s more, the BSC
Bass Fishing Team is holding its own against much larger and more-
established schools. In February, the team placed third out of 60
anglers in a competition on Lake Guntersville, bringing in five bass
weighing 17.2 pounds.
“Since we placed highly on the first event of the year, this puts us in
the early discussion for contenders for team of the year,” said Garret Whitworth, a BSC senior who is club captain and one-half of the
two-man team, along with first-year student Harrison Jordan.
Although fishing for college may sound like a joke, it’s actually hugely popular around the country and especially in the South.
More than 600 schools have fishing clubs, up from about 90 a few years ago, according to F.L.W. Outdoors, which runs the Fishing
League Worldwide collegiate fishing tour. Although most programs are club sports, a few colleges and universities have even begun to
award scholarships.
“Bass fishing is an exploding sport,” said Jordan, a Mobile native who competed in saltwater fishing contests before coming to BSC.
“Every Southeastern Conference school has a team—it’s a huge thing.”
Fishing is not governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, so the students are eligible for cash prizes at their
tournaments—some of them worth thousands of dollars. That helps motivate the BSC team members, who almost entirely fund
themselves, providing their own boat, equipment, and travel expenses, with a little bit of help from sponsors like Owner Hooks and
the camera company Syn-Fab.
BSC’s team competes in tours organized by F.L.W. and the Alabama-based Fishlife Collegiate; Whitworth and Jordan fished at an
invited tournament at Lake Guntersville and plan to be at another at Tennessee’s Chickamauga Lake in May. Typically, the two-person
teams are judged on the biggest five bass they bring in over the course of the competition.
“It’s challenging—you have to be able to find the fish,” said Jordan. “The beauty of bass fishing is that there are a lot of different
ways of bringing them in.”
Pictured at the Lake Guntersville fishing competition are Harrison
Jordan (on left) and Garret Whitworth.
BSC
working proactively to protect students, prevent violence
Lately, stories about sexual assault on college campuses have been all over the national news. Fortunately, Birmingham-Southern
has been working for several years to get out in front of the issue—and to keep all students safe on campus.
Since 2012, the college has cooperated with its partner schools in the Birmingham Area Consortium for Higher Education, which
received a grant from the Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women. The grant pulls students, faculty, and staff
members from Student Development, Campus Police, and other areas to work together on programs to prevent campus violence.
Other recent efforts include educating students even before they come to campus through online tutorials they take over the summer
before first-year Orientation.
College employees have also attended several training sessions, some of them paid for by the grant, to make sure BSC is up on the
latest efforts nationwide. A team of student life staff members traveled to Atlanta this spring for a training on responding to assault
reports, supporting victims, and investigating claims. And another group, including Dr. David Eberhardt, vice president for Student
Development, headed to Washington, D.C., last month to learn more about developing a strategic plan to prevent assaults, stalking,
and dating violence in collaboration with the Birmingham YWCA and the Crisis Center.
“We’ve really taken a proactive approach, supported by the BACHE grant, to ensure that we’re not just being compliant, but really
seeking to use the best practices around these issues,” Eberhardt said. “It is so important to us to ensure that current and future
students get to experience the same safe environment that we’ve all enjoyed here on the Hilltop.”