LAKE CHEROKEE, Texas – The Bearcat Anglers opened their season with the annual Bassmaster National Championship, which lasted from Thursday, July 10th to Saturday, July 12th and was held in Lake Cherokee, Texas.
The three-day event saw all 154 teams fish for the first two days, and only the top twelve boats fished on Championship Saturday.
"The guys fished really hard, covered a lot of water, and gave it 110 percent" said Head Coach Jon Rinderer.
The highest finishing McKendree team was sophomores Parker Welch (Spring Hill, Kan.) and Angelo Malek (Lake St. Louis, Mo.). After sitting in 65th place after day one, they moved up the leaderboard to finish in 37th place with 22-5.
The freshman team of Liam Bonnett (Pittsfield, Ill.) and Matthew Qualich (Buffalo Grove, Ill.) also made a huge move, jumping from 114th up to 70th with McKendree's biggest bag of day two weighing 12-14, giving them a total weight of 19-2.
Junior Connor Hall (Jacksonville, Ill.) and freshman Carson Belville (Rushville, Ill.) also moved up 15 places to finish 85th with 16-13.
Seniors Evan Sutton (Highland, Ill.) and Jaxson Freeman (Loda, Ill.) placed 97th with a two-day total of 13-15.
Senior Kyle Hopping (Lake St. Louis, Mo.) and junior Kai Barnett (Columbiana, Ala.) finished 101st with 13-8.
Juniors Zach Pocos (Norwalk, Ohio) and Tucker Siminak (Antioch, Ill.) weighed 12-11 for 107th.
Junior Ethan Fields (Breese, Ill.) had 11-10 for 115th, while graduate Harmon Marien (Eagle River, Wis.) and freshman Mason Darling (Highland, Ill.) finished with 5-4 for 140th.
UP NEXT
The next time the team gets back together will be in August when the school year starts back up.
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