A new fishing season has started for Chapman, and the team is just getting done with its first tournament of the season and preparing for the cold part of the season. 

Principal Andrew McMillan seems to be excited about going into the 2022-2023 fishing season. 

“I’m excited for those guys,” McMillan said. “I think that they have been ready to go. I’m excited for the sport to continue to grow and to be the leader of the state. 

Some of the students have been waiting to be on the lake through the summer, and they are thrilled for it to be back on. 

Senior Rylan Green is ready for his last season. 

“I’m excited about it,” he said. “You know it’s my last season just can’t wait to see what happens and get out there again.”

With another season coming along there are more kids coming onto the team that will give this team higher points and higher chances to get to the overall championships.

McMillan thinks they will have even more success. 

“We’ve had a lot of success, and these guys are going to keep bringing in big fish, and our guys have won overall tournaments, and I think that our guys will have the same success this year,” McMillan said. 

Green also is excited to be a role model for new freshmen and thinks there will be more weight on the scale due to new team members.       

“I think all the freshmen coming in is a good thing, and it’s great that there are younger people wanting to learn more about it,” he said. “It’s great to be an example for them.”

Fishing teams that go through high schools are very rare and administrators and students must have a reason to consider this a sport and how could this sport affect them as a student of Chapman,

McMillan thinks that there are many advantages of this sport. 

“It’s such a unique sport,” he said. “It gives students an opportunity to do something that they wouldn’t normally be able to do, and it gives them a chance to do it for their school. It usually would just be a hobby but now they can turn it into something to represent their school as part of the Chapman fishing team.” 

Green is also very confident in this sport’s positive effect on him. 

“This gives me something to look forward to after a long week of school and just gets me outside and gets me moving, and it makes me happy doing what I love to do,” Green said.

There are some opportunities for the students for scholarships and opportunities for getting to do what they love in college. s 

“I think off the top there are a ton of scholarship opportunities available for them so they can go fishing in college,” McMillan said. 

Freshman Hayden Killian is very confident in the older guys on the team.

“I feel like there are a lot of people on the team that have potential and that will go to college with this opportunity,” he said. Green also thinks that he may be able to do what he loves in college: 

“I think that there are a lot of opportunities for me after school. I have talked to some colleges, and hopefully, those follow through and I get to fish to a higher level”.