Marshall Deakins of Dunlap, Tenn., won the T-H Marine Bass Fishing League All-American tournament that ended Saturday on Pickwick Lake. With 60 pounds, 6 ounces of bass for three days, Deakins won $125,000 and a berth in the Forrest Wood Cup, which FLW bills as the world championship of bass fishing. Jeff Knight of Cleveland was 10th with 34-6 for two days, good for $11,000. Alex Hester of Crossville, Tenn., was the co-angler winner with 49-0, earning $50,000. “This is the biggest win of my career by far,” Deakins, a five-time previous winner at the BFL level, said in an FLW release late Saturday night. “I didn’t think I had a shot at winning this tournament, even with my 10-pound lead going into the final day.” His Saturday haul was 15-5. He said his main two fishing spots were a ledge just downriver from the Natchez Trace bridge and a shell bar atop a main-river ledge just up from Kogers Island. “I kept the boat in 18 to 21 feet of water and I threw up to 4 to 6 feet on top of it,” Deakins said. Brent Anderson of Kingston Springs, Tenn., got the boaters’ runner-up prize of $20,200 with a 52-12 total.
* Connor Cohran and Cole Sands from Bryan College finished 13th in the YETI FLW College Fishing National Championship that ended Friday on Wheeler Lake in Alabama. They bagged a two-day total of 23 pounds, 7 ounces of bass in the event for which they qualified in 2016. Bryan’s Nathan Bell and Dylan Kear were 18th with 21-6, and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Patrick Hoskins and Dillon Falardeau were 40th with 17-14. Duos from Kansas State and South Carolina were first and second.
Swimming
* Ricardo Valdivia from South Miami, Fla., and Sandra Frimerman-Bergquist of Bloomington, Minn., won the 9.2-mile ultramaraton national championship race Sunday in the Chattanooga Swim Fest in the Tennessee River. Valdivia finished in 2 hours, 5 minutes, 30 seconds, and Frimerman-Bergquist was the first female and second overall in 2:07:45. Kurt Dickson of Glendale, Ariz., was third in 2:08:19, six seconds ahead Adam Dawkins of Jasper, Ind. Stephen Rouch of Indianapolis completed the top five in 2:11:08, and Christopher Graefe of Jamaica Plain, Mass., was sixth in 2:12:17. Victoria Rian of Indianapolis was the second woman and eighth overall in 2:13:20. Rick Schumacher of Hixson was 20th out of 98 finishers in 2:17:41. There was another U.S. Masters Swimming national-title race Saturday, a 2.4-miler with 193 finishers, and Dawkins won in 30:57 with Valdivia sixth (32:16) and Jeremy Kane of Nashville (31:19), Michel Heijnen of Wilmington, N.C. (31:31), female winner Ashley Whitney of Nashville (31:38) and Dickson (31:45) in between. Schumacher was the highest area finisher in that race also – 14th in 32:35.
Tennis
* Maddox Bandy of Signal Mountain lost 6-0, 6-4 to top-seeded Julia Adams of Knoxville in the Girls’ 18 singles final of the Pride of Tennessee Junior Qualifying tennis tournament in Chattanooga, and two local duos lost in boys’ doubles finals Sunday: Zan Meyer and Mark Thel to 18s singles champion and runner-up Sean Presson and Amir Salem of Knoxville and Matt Barnett and Ryan Toomey to Weston Touliatos and Takuma Walter of Memphis in 16s. Barnett is the top seed in 16s singles and plays for that title to conclude the tournament this morning. Adams also won in Girls’ 18 doubles with Lauren Yoon.