High school clubs, whether athletic or not, are only as strong as those that are a part of the group. A strong membership usually means that the club is thriving and doing well. That is the case for the Weatherford High School fishing club. 

The leaders of the group are Shelly Pond and Rocky Powell. Shelly says their group is made up of high school and middle school kids and some awesome volunteers that are big assets.

“We have a mixture of high school teams and middle school teams,” she said. “We have six high school teams and eight middle school teams. We started with only two, sometimes three, teams total so we have grown a lot over the last couple of years.  We could not do this without the help of parents who will volunteer their boats and time to be boat captains. We also have a former member, Boston Bayless, who attends Oklahoma State University, who helps get these kids an opportunity to do this as well as some good-hearted individuals who love seeing the kids have this opportunity.”

The fishing club was founded by Shelly’s husband, Doug, along with coach Rocky Powell and Bryan Bayless. For Doug, starting the program was most importantly about the kids. 

“We started this program as a way to get kids more opportunities and activities to keep them headed in the right direction,” he said. “We wanted to give them another opportunity for kids to do something fun and maybe affect their lives.”

This season has gone pretty well for the Eagles fishing club, but Shelly knows that winning is not everything. 

“It has been a decent season,” she said. “Some of the tournaments were a little hard on us overall but we did have some kids qualifying for state.  All of our junior division kids will have the opportunity to fish at state if they so choose.  We find ourselves at somewhat of a disadvantage due to us being from western Oklahoma and all of the tournaments are on the east side of the state. That makes it a little tougher on us to get much time in on the tournament lakes but our kids have done well and I think they just enjoy getting out on the water.”