Bryan College fishing team has new boat garages

Bryan College's bass anglers have some brand-new on-campus garages for their boats.
Bryan College's bass anglers have some brand-new on-campus garages for their boats.
photo The site where bass boat garages now stand on the Bryan College campus was cleared from an area behind the baseball field.

The Bryan College bass fishing team quickly has made a name for itself since being formed two years ago, with an 18th-place final Cabela's School of the Year ranking out of 310 colleges and universities in 2015 and a sixth-place finish this past spring.

The campus is near the Dayton Boat Dock, which has become a frequent headquarters for tournaments on popular Chickamauga Lake, and now the campus itself is home to garages for the team members' expensive bass boats. They previously were kept in a former Ace Hardware building on the north end of Dayton, but now the Lions anglers can feel more like the school's other sports with on-campus facilities.

While some of the electrical work in the garages is being finished, a half-dozen boats already are there and "a few more" will be brought in soon, according to coach Mike Keen. He has 20 team members this year, which means 10 boats are needed, and the first 2016-17 competition is a Sept. 24 FLW Collegiate Tour regional out of Dayton Boat Dock.

"The garages can hold 12 boats," Keen said.

There are six 24-by-32-foot buildings in a space that was cleared behind Bryan's baseball field.

"It was a team effort," Keen said Wednesday, "starting with the folks taking care of the financial arrangements and vice president Tim Hostetler, who ramrodded it through."

Hostetler's responsibilities include the college's physical plant and construction services, and members of the maintenance staff "really worked hard," Keen said, in the process of cutting trees, doing the grade work and overseeing the building.

Bryan's competition is mostly in the spring semester and includes the Bassmaster collegiate tour as well as the FLW and Cabela's college trails. The 20 anglers this year are mostly sophomores and freshmen, including Jacob Fouts from Walker Valley High School and Connor Cohran from Dalton High among the seven newcomers.

Keen, a retired insurance agency operator with a lot of fishing in his background, has a couple of assistant coaches with impressive pro credentials. David Perron, a former Bluefield College soccer coach, chairs Bryan's exercise and health science department department and is a regular in Bass Fishing League division top-20 standings. He won the BFL's Lake Guntersville Super Tournament in 2010.

The other assistant is Michael Neal, who operates the Dayton Boat Dock and is one of the up-and-coming pros on FLW's top series.

"We're proud of what we've done so far, and we want to keep building on that," Keen said. "We have lofty goals, but we have some strong anglers."

Contact Ron Bush at rbush@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6291.

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