Competitive bass fishing is one of the fastest growing sports in the nation. The future of this sport lies in the hands of high school and collegiate anglers who are currently being handicapped by the tournament format implemented by BASS. Unfortunately, over the last three years BASS Has scheduled an event on top of the Major League Fishing national championship every single year. This does nothing but hurt anglers who have worked hard to get to the Major League Fishing championship. Along with this, college anglers are often unable to compete in BASS tournaments because they do not have separate divisions and can only accommodate 250 boats in each of their four events for the entire nation (usually the same 250 boats in each event). For many college anglers we have a very limited time to build on our fishing career and the current BASS format is not helping at all. We are asking that BASS create a solution to help accommodate the vast amount of anglers who are not able to compete in various events due to poor scheduling and the lack of tournaments ran by BASS. With only four events with a max of 250 boats per event their is no way to cater to the entire field of anglers. Along with this, the few boats that are able to compete in the events are often forced to travel insane distances only adding to the immense cost which ultimately is paid by the student angler. Their is no reason a team of college anglers should be forced to travel across the country because that is their only shot at building their fishing career. MLF has proven that it is possible to cater to the entire collegiate field and it is possible to host multiple divisions. It is time for BASS to change its structure and give the full field of collegiate anglers the chance to build their career. The current BASS format is handicapping our sport and striping away many collegiate anglers futures. Think of where pro fishing would be today if five years ago all the anglers from the collegiate series weren’t given a chance to compete? The collegiate fishing community would love to support BASS and compete but right now unfortunately only a select handful of teams are able to do that because of how BASS is set up. The current system is broken and we want to see it fixed so that our sport which we dearly love can grow to its full potential. These younger anglers are the future of the sport and unfortunately right now we are handicapping them by limiting their careers. Without your help, this issue will only continue to get worse as bass fishing is one of the fastest growing sports in the nation and this issue needs to be fixed now.