While high school sports like football, basketball and baseball soak up the spotlight, Lakeside also has a rich tradition in volleyball, golf, tennis and for the last five years, bass fishing.
Some of the Lakeside anglers have been with the fishing team since their fifth-grade year. High school fishing teams compete in two-man teams.
Lakeside fishing team head coach Christy Culbreath had five combined first place finishes amongst her teams in the 2021-2022 season.
"We started five years ago," Culbreath said. "These kids have come a long way in five years, watching them carry their big ole bags of fish up to the weigh-in scale but that was the love from a couple of kids who have heard about the fishing team starting and they had the idea and they knew I loved to fish. They approached me and said let's do it."
Culbreath's teams finished in the top 10 in tournaments 31 times during the campaign.
"We started," she said, "getting people that we knew in the fishing industry to come give us some help and it just snowballed from there."
The original members of the team were junior Kanon Goss, junior Holten Phillips, sophomore Griffin Ralph and junior Cole Martin.
"We have a club here on campus," Culbreath said. "We meet once a month with guest speakers.
Conservation projects senior Devon Kessler is the president of the club.
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"We get together with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and we build fish habitats," Kessler said. "We went to Lake Hamilton. A couple of us got on our boats and dropped them into the water."
Kessler's tournament best was a third-place finish on Lake Millwood two years ago.
The team won The Bass Federation State Champion honors, had three of Arkansas' 16 two-man teams that qualified for the high school Bassmaster nationals and the team of Goss and Martin was one of the four Arkansas teams that qualified for the TBF high school nationals.
"Me and my fishing partner Goss were the first two on the team," Martin said. "We helped build the team. Now we have one of the biggest teams in the state."
Martin and Goss also placed 32nd out of 315 teams at the Bassmaster national qualifier and 16 out of 405 teams at the TBF high school nationals qualifier.
"It was cool," Martin said. "We got to go to two nationals this summer. One at Pickwick Lake in Alabama. It was fun. Bassmaster's nationals at Hartwell in South Carolina, it was pretty fun competing at a national level."
Ralph and junior Kaleb Snow competed in 11 tournaments as a team with three wins and six top five finishes. They were named AYBN Anglers of the Year and qualified for Bassmaster high school nationals.
"I am the only sophomore," Ralph said. "I am trying to get more people involved in my grade. I am going to try to go to college and then get to the next level of fishing. I have been looking at Arkansas Tech. I like to use a top water walking baits."
Ralph orders blank baits and airbrushes his own color schemes and designs that are not found in stores.
"Fishing means the world to me," Snow said. "You are out there in God's creation, just being out there before daylight and the sun comes up, it is something to really take in. Being on the water all day you get to notice eagles and stuff you do not get to see sitting in the house all day."
Snow is a multisport athlete. He is also on the baseball team, and he lives on the lake.
"The biggest bass I ever caught I put in my bathtub," he said. "It was a 10 pounder. My favorite lake to fish locally is Millwood."
The competitors supply their own boats to compete in these tournaments. Lakeside competes in approximately 20 tournaments per year.
Phillips and senior Hunter Little competed in eight tournaments as a team, winning one. They also notched five top 10 finishes, were named AYBN Anglers of the Year and qualified for the Bassmaster high school nationals.
Phillips said a team joke is he won a lot of door prizes at nationals.
"Out of 600 people I won two door prizes, but my luck kind of ran out there," Phillips said. "We fish for mainly largemouth and spotted bass. I like throwing a frog bait."
At Maumelle, Martin and Josh Bowen's lower unit went out on their boat and they had a flat tire, but they were able to get another boat to help them out and they were still able to fish.
"We have had a lot of success in local tournaments," Bowen said. "We fish Tuesday, Thursday and Friday night around here. We win a lot of those. We placed 10 out of 36 last week on Lake Maumelle. That was a fun weekend. We had a lot of trouble just getting to that tournament. We will be doing good next spring. We only have a few more tournaments left this fall."
In the spring season, the team fishes five or six days a week after school.
"My best memory on the water is getting on a big school of fish and catching fish after fish," Goss said. "That is probably one of the best times, having fish just piled up in the bottom of the boat. I have been fishing as long as I can remember with my grandpa and my dad. I never thought it would come this far. It is a blast. I love it."
Members of the team seek out their own sponsors as a group, and their winnings from tournaments go into scholarship funds.
"These gentlemen go out and ask for sponsorships in the Hot Springs area," Culbreath said. "We have had huge success for people who want to pour resources into our team."
Just like pro bass anglers, the Lakeside anglers put all their sponsors on their jersey they wear to competitions.
"It is scholarships," Culbreath said. "What they do is they fish different trails. They have the Bass Federation and the Youth Federation. The Bass has it divided into northern, southern, central and ArkLaTex trails."
Little fishes in multiple trails.
"The southern trails are from Hot Springs down," Little said. "Last year we fished in Felsenthal, which is on the Louisiana state line. The central trail is Hot Springs to north of Little Rock."
At the high school level of bass fishing, the anglers can use any kind of advanced tech that professional anglers can utilize like forward facing sonar, down and side scanning equipment.
"When I am not fishing I usually clean out the boat from all the snacks we had the day after the tournament," senior Aaron Stevens said. "I make sure everything is tied up properly, sleeves are on the rods and make sure everything is clean for the next tournament. Sometimes I go golfing. I try to do over 20 tournaments a year."
The different trails the teams fish give them a very diverse habitat to grow their experience from the southern lakes that have muddier water to the less stained waters of the central trails.
Fishing multiple trails gives the angler a higher chance to reach nationals.
"Nationals were fun," Little said. "It was a great experience to go on Lake Hartwell which was where the Bassmaster Classic was this year. Hartwell is on the border of South Carolina and Georgia. It was different water. It was like you put Hamilton and Ouachita together."
At the Alabama Nationals, Martin and Goss placed 13th out of 416 boats, and in South Carolina, Ralph and Snow placed 90th out of 311 at Bassmaster.
"It was impressive," Culbreath said. "The night before they got there, the team got on Google earth and did research on the lake to plan their day."
Other than sponsorships on all the jerseys, the team wears a Phil 4:13 patch which describes their team motto of "We can do it, we got this."