2 Auburn students win bass fishing tournament

AUBURN, Ala. (AP) — Two Auburn University students have won the $1 million first-place prize in the Bass Pro Shops U.S.

Open National Bass Fishing Amateur Team Championships.

Logan Parks, a senior, and Tucker Smith, a sophomore, topped 350 teams in the threeday event at Table Rock Lake in Ridgedale, Missouri, pulling

in five fish last Sunday for a total of 16.41

pounds, news outlets reported.

The tournament, which celebrated Bass

Pro Shops 50th anniversary and also raised money and

awareness for conservation, will be aired on NBC at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 5.

Parks and Smith split the prize and also went home with 2022 Toyota Tundra Crewmax trucks and Nitro Z21 bass boats for their efforts.

"It hasn't really sunk in yet," said Parks, 23, who will graduate with degrees in supply

chain management and information systems management in December. "We woke up this morning thinking it was a

dream, but then we looked at our phones

and realized it wasn't. We're just blown away."

"We're speechless. To win a tournament of this caliber is amazing," said

Smith, a 20-year-old marketing major who won three Bassmaster national titles in high

school, said they were "speechless."

"To win a tournament of this caliber is amazing," he said.

Auburn's team was 10th out of 350 teams after the first day of competition, finished

eighth among the top 200 teams on day two

and then hit the jackpot on the final day. They topped the team

of Joseph Nicholson and Gary Sterkel, both

of Cleveland, by just .23 of a pound in the final tally to take home the win.

The key to the championship, Parks said, was spotting a group

of birds diving in the water in an area of the 45,000-acre (18,210 -hectare) lake they had

not yet explored.