Auburn University bass fishing team reels in a national championship

Add Major League Fishing National Championship to Auburn University’s list of sporting accomplishments. The Auburn University bass fishing team recently participated in—and won—the first-ever Major League Fishing College Redcrest National Championship, held on the Mississippi River in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

“It’s pretty sweet to be able to say we are the first-ever Redcrest National Champions,” said Logan Parks, vice president of the team. “We are looking forward to defending our title next year.”

The Auburn University Bass Fishing team is the top ranked Division One team in the country, and it has held this ranking almost every year since the team was founded in 2007. Team members will compete in 15 to 20 events per season, and Auburn’s team is the only one ever to qualify and send a boat to every Fishing League Worldwide National Championship.

The team has some notable former members including the winner of the Bassmaster Classic in 2017 and 2018, Jordan Lee, and his brother, Matt, who won the Carhartt College Bassmaster Classic Bracket.

“Jordan actually took another team member and me fishing in eighth grade when we first started our high school team at Auburn High School,” said Parks. “Ever since then, all we’ve wanted to do is come to Auburn and fish.”

Parks said he is honored to be able to compete on the same team as Lee.

“To be able to represent the same school they did makes us set high standards for ourselves,” said Parks. “They left a legacy for us to carry on and we plan on doing that.”

Team members included Logan Parks, a junior studying supply chain management; Lucas Lindsay, a junior studying agricultural science; Will Phillips, a senior studying mechanical engineering; Chase Mundhenke, a sophomore studying agriculture business and economics; Patch Pelt, a senior studying building science; and Anthony Vintson, a senior studying accounting. They represented Auburn on three boats and brought home the title from the Redcrest National Championships.

The team received an invitation to participate in this prestigious competition because it qualified and was ranked among the top five schools in the country based on the competition’s unique point system.

Five other teams were then randomly drawn to have the opportunity to compete. Auburn’s team had already won the Major League Fishing College Iron Bowl held in May.

The Auburn team’s top two boats caught a combined weight of nearly 97 pounds,winning them the competition and being seven pounds heavier than any of the other schools that competed.

“We ended up putting together a game plan and found enough fish to win,” Parks said.

For more information about the team, go to https://www.facebook.com/AuburnBass/.