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The Franklin County High School Bass team competed in the Central Tennessee Bass Nation high school championship tournament on May 6 at Old Hickory Lake in Hendersonville with the team clinching a regional title in the point standings for the year.

The teams in the Central region are ranked based on the combined points of the top three boats for each school with Franklin County’s final tally coming out to 2,096 points to give them the title of Top School of the Year for their area.

Leading the way for Franklin County was the duo of Christian Bradford and Dakota Jones with 733 points for the campaign, followed by the team of Caden Stevens and Hunter Crittenden with 718 points and the boat of Jed Draper and Kaden King with 645 points.

All three of Franklin County’s top boats also cracked the top 25 in the individual regional rankings for the season with Bradford and Jones taking ninth place overall, Stevens and Crittenden finishing 11^th and Draper and King placing 24^th.

The Franklin County anglers finished ahead of runner-up Sumner County by 102 points and beat out Gallatin, the defending top school in Tennessee by 167 points.

In the regional championship tournament on May 6, Draper and King finished 12^th out of 73 boats with five fish weighing 11.6 pounds.

Bradford and Jones were close behind in 14^th with five fish weighing 11.24 pounds, and Stevens and Crittenden placed 28^th overall with five fish weighing 9.39 pounds.

Two Franklin County junior anglers also received major accolades that same weekend as Carson Stevens and Wesley Osuna finished first in the Central Tennessee point standings after competing in the junior championship tournament on May 7 at Old Hickory Lake.

The junior division is comprised of anglers from second grade through eighth grade with Stevens, a third-grader at Rock Creek Elementary, and Osuna, a fourth-grader at Flintville, both being on the younger side of that age range.

Stevens and Osuna ended their 2022-23 season with 793 points to edge out Sumner County’s Hudson Clark and Jackson Leath by 12 points for the top spot in their region.

The duo of Stevens and Osuna recorded a fourth-place finish in the junior championship event on May 7 with five fish weighing 12.42 pounds.

Keaton Henley and Jaxson Cooley also competed for Franklin County in the regional junior championship and finished 14^th with three fish weighing 6.09 pounds. Henley and Cooley joined their teammates in the top 10 for the season as they finished ninth for the year with 611 total points.

The Franklin County High School anglers will next compete on June 2-3 in the Tennessee Bass Nation State Championship event on Douglas Lake in Dandridge.

Stevens and Osuna will represent Franklin County in the Bassmaster Junior National Championship on July 17-19 at Lake Hartwell in Anderson County, South Carolina.

The FCHS and Franklin County Junior fishing teams are both looking for new members at this time. For info, contact FCHS fishing coach Martin Tyler at 931-308-4548 or FC Junior fishing coach Terry Stevens at 931-691-9750.