HICKORY, N.C. — The Catawba Valley Community College bass fishing program continues to make history this week with all of its anglers competing in the BoatUS Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship.

This is the first time in program history that every Red Hawk angler is competing at one national championship tournament.

"This year has been incredible," said CVCC bass fishing head coach Angela Mayo. "To be able to finish high enough in the national rankings to send every one one of our anglers to this tournament is a great accomplishment. I'm proud of every single one of them. For such a relatively new program to finish the season ranked 16th in the country and qualify all five teams to go is pretty amazing."

Lane Bailey will be one of two Red Hawk anglers, including teammate Adam Seagle, who will be making their fourth national tournament appearance this week.

"It's always fun getting to go to a national tournament because you're around the best," Bailey said. "This isn't like the B.A.S.S. and FLW tournaments where you have to qualify. Regardless, you're still competing in a national championship whether you win it or not."

For some Red Hawk anglers, like Lucas Oliver, this will be their first national tournament appearance.

"I'm excited," Oliver said. "I'm a little nervous because this is one of my biggest tournaments. I'm happy that our whole team gets to go. We have a fun time hanging out together. It's all about helping each other out, talking to each other and fishing our hearts out."

For many Red Hawk anglers, it will be their first time not only competing at a national tournament, but at the host venue — Lake Murray in South Carolina.

"Honestly, I've heard that it's a shallow lake," Oliver said of Lake Murray. "I'm going to use some of my past experience from our tournaments in Florida. We fished a lot of shallow water out there."

This will be Bailey's second time fishing on Lake Murray and his first tournament on the lake since high school.

"When I went there in high school, I was new to bass fishing," Bailey said. "I started bass fishing six years ago, and I didn't know what I was doing. It's totally different from the lakes around here. Now that I've been halfway across the country to fish, I think we'll catch them. It's just catching the right fish."

With 10 Red Hawk anglers practicing and competing at this week's national tournament, Mayo believes the numbers game could come into play.

"It is big water," Mayo said of Lake Murray. "They're going to see a bigger lake than they've ever seen in any college tournament yet. Navigationally it'll be different for them. They've just got to have really good practices, focus and drill down where they are going to fish. You can't fish the whole lake during this tournament. In practice each team will have to take a section of the lake and see what they can find out as far as size and numbers and see if they can get in a good pattern. Each night, we'll meet and talk about what they found out that day. That's going to be important at this tournament more than any tournament that we've had in the past because of the size of the lake."

The potential of winning a national championship is something that has been on many of the minds of CVCC's anglers.

"Every time we go out on the water, we strive to win," Oliver said. "There is a lot of good competition, but we want to be the best. We're out there practicing every single day — from the first day of practice until the last day of the tournament. We're out there bright and early until sunset. We're trying our best. Everyone wants to bring home that trophy. That's our goal."

Mayo believes that her team has a great chance to not only post solid finishes at this week's tournament, but also win a national championship.

"On any give day, any team can have a great tournament and win," Mayo said. "We talked in our last meeting that this tournament is different. It's not about points like it usually is. It's about winning. With this being a national championship, the mindset changes from getting your limit, getting as many points as you can and looking for big fish to now you're going to look for those five big bites. I think we have some anglers who have the potential to bring it home."

The BoatUS Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship starts on Wednesday and continues through Thursday. For more details on the event, please visit https://bit.ly/3wB5jJN.