Bryan guys meet in national final
Bryan College already is the Cabela’s School of the Year for bass fishing, and the Dayton, Tenn., school’s Jacob Foutz and Jake Lee won the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series national championship together last week in Minnesota. Today the same two 2016-17 freshmen will be first and second in the individual event that follows the nationals. They will face each other on Serpent Lake in Minnesota after winning their semifinals Tuesday in the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Classic Bracket. The winner today will earn a berth in the 2018 GEICO Bassmaster Classic and paid entries into all nine 2018 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Open tournaments. Foutz won Tuesday with 13 pounds, 6 ounces against Chad Sweitzer of Chico State, who totaled 12 pounds. After edging defending champion John Garrett of Bethel University on Monday in the competition for the individuals in the top four finishing boats Saturday, Lee topped Bethel’s Cole Floyd, 13-4 to 12-0. “We said from the beginning that if we had to lose to someone we would want it to be one of us,” Lee, who was on the first Bassmaster High School All-American Fishing Team in 2015, was quoted in a B.A.S.S. release. “We both want to win it bad, but neither one of us is going to be too sad since one of us will win.” The Lee-Foutz matchup guarantees that a freshman will win the Classic Bracket for the first time. The two Lions are the third set of teammates to meet for the title: Jordan Lee of Auburn, the reigning Bassmaster Classic champion, went against his brother in the 2012 final and another Auburn angler the next year.
FIELD HOCKEY
› The Sewanee field hockey team begins its 2017 season on Sept. 2, and coach Laura “Mac” McIntyre’s Tigers play their first four matches in Virginia and Indiana. They open in Harrisonburg, Va., against Eastern Mennonite and play the next day, Sept. 3, at Roanoke College. The next weekend they face Earlham at Richmond, Ind., on Sept. 9 and play there again on Sept. 10 against Oberlin. Sewanee’s first home matches are Sept. 22 at 6 p.m. CDT against Lindenwood-Belleville and Sept. 24 at noon CDT against Converse. It’s on the road again the following weekend at Ohio Wesleyan and Wittenberg before a five-game home stretch that includes Southern Athletic Association matchups against Ferrum on Oct. 7, Concordia (Wis.) on Oct. 14, Hendrix on Oct. 21 and Rhodes on Oct. 22 sandwiched around an Oct. 16 nonconference visit from league foe Transylvania. SAA games at Centre and Transylvania on Oct. 28 and 29 lead into the league tournament Nov. 3-5 at the home of the No. 1 seed. The Tigers went 6-9 in McIntyre’s debut season last year.
BASKETBALL
› The Sewanee men’s basketball team begins today a nine-day trip to Venice, Italy, and Munich, Germany, in which the Tigers will play four games. They will face two games in each city in their first competition under first-year head coach Mick Hedgepeth. “It’s a valuable experience coming in as the new head coach, since I was the assistant coach last year,” Hedgepeth said in a school web post. “Having my assistant coach, Brian Emerson, with me, this is like a dress rehearsal for our staff and our players. Since we do not officially start practice until October 15, it allows us to save the time in the preseason and learn from our mistakes from last year.” The team gathered last Friday to begin getting ready to play together, but basketball progress is not the primary objective of the European adventure, Hedgepeth emphasized. “The main goal for this trip is non-basketball,” he said. “This trip is to give our student-athletes the opportunity to see and experience different cultures. We have some on our team who have not been outside the United States, and we have one who has never flown before. This will be a special trip for all involved.”