Schools

Spartan Anglers Named 'Fishing Team of the Year'

A surprise ceremony was held at Oak Lawn Community High School recognizing the student anglers for promoting the sport in school and in the community.

The Oak Lawn Community High School fishing team looked a little shocked when walking into the Little Theater last Friday to the cheers of fellow students and a table loaded with fishing gear from a sporting goods company.

Watch the video of the surprise award ceremony.

The surprise ceremony honored OLCHS as the Fish and Outdoor Radio Show/Plano and Frabill’s “Illinois High Schools Fish Here” fishing team of the year.

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The Illinois High School Association established bass fishing as a high school sport at the beginning of the 2008-09 school year with 199 teams. The sport has since grown to include 237 high school fishing teams in Illinois.

“Fishing and Outdoor Radio Show” hosts Jim DaRosa and Don Dziedzina came up with the idea to recognize the under-recognized high school anglers while sitting in a goose pit three years ago. The outdoorsmen wanted to honor not only those teams that promoted fishing in their schools, but their communities as well.

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"If you take a look at a lot of the local newspapers you’re going to see football players, basketball players and baseball players, but you hardly ever see any recognition for the high school fishing kids,” radio show co-host Dziedzina said. “We thought that had to change and someone had to get the ball rolling. We came up with the idea to do something on our radio show.”

The radio-show hosts began hosting a weekly segment dedicated to Illinois high school fishing sponsored by the sporting goods company Plano-Frabill. Illinois’s 237 fishing teams were asked to participate in a rigorous survey to tell all about their team.  

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The Spartan Fishing Club has over 30 members from freshmen to seniors, including both boys and girls, and is coached by Christopher Kuycht. The coach worked on the state level to helped launch the sport in the beginning. Members of the team meet weekly to practice their angling skills in the classroom and on the water.

The OLCHS team was chosen for its community service, establishing a fishing rod and reel loaner program where community members can check out fishing equipment at the Oak Lawn Library with their library cards.

The team has also assisted the Cook County Forest Preserves in building fishing cribs for forest preserve lakes. The students also collected donated rod and reels and provided them to the Disabled Veterans Fishing Program.

Putting the Spartan fishing team over the top, however, was their formal presentation before the Cook County Board of Commissioners asking them to approve the budget for the Forest Preserve’s Fisheries Division.

“Most athletes’ careers are over when they graduate from high school,” DeRosa said, “but fishing is something that goes on forever.”

D229 Superintendent and Principal Dr. Michael Riordan seemed pretty certain that the students knew nothing of the surprise. He thanked Kuycht for convincing him to allocate the funding and resources to starting a high school fishing team at a time when budgetary dollars were shrinking.

“This reaches out to a whole different niche of students that may be athletes and maybe aren’t,” Riordan said. “It's one more way to provide good, enriching, life-long learning opportunities for our students.”

The Spartan fishing team was rewarded with $5,000 worth of fishing gear from Plano-Frabill and a plaque recognizing them as the 2013 teacm of the year.

“Holy smokes,” Kuycht said, walking into the Little Theater to cheering students. “I’m shaking.”

Source: Fishing and Outdoor Radio Show


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