When Rick Emmitt assembled the first ever Drury University bass fishing team in the spring of 2015, his roster consisted of six anglers, only two of whom had ever competed in a tournament.
Within six years, he watched two of his anglers win the biggest tournament in Columbia PFG College Fishing Presented by Abu Garcia, the National Championship.
Emmitt has never been one to shy away from obstacles. He’s incorporated that into Drury’s identity. While his program may not be able to match the resources afforded to some of the top College Fishing performers, Emmitt has steadily built the Panther program from a ragtag bunch to a perennial contender in both the National Championship and Tackle Warehouse School of the Year standings.
Building a program from scratch
Emmitt has spent his whole life in the fishing industry, but for most of it, he never envisioned himself as a coach. He spent 35 years working for Bass Pro Shops, including a 15-year stint managing the Bass Pro Shops pro staff, where he worked with the likes of Ott DeFoe, Edwin Evers and Kevin VanDam.
Initially, when a friend told Emmitt that Drury (located in his hometown of Springfield, Missouri) was looking for someone to spearhead a new bass fishing team, he kept his position with Bass Pro and started coaching on the side. By Emmitt’s own admission, his first squad “wasn’t very good.”
“I couldn’t recruit the first year, so I had to take people that actually were already going to school at Drury,” he said. “Only two of them had ever even fished a tournament. So, it took us a couple years.”
Emmitt slowly expanded the roster and recruited anglers with some competitive experience. Seeing his success, the university decided in 2020 it wanted to expand the bass fishing team to 20 to 25 anglers. At that point, Emmitt decided to commit to coaching full-time.
“I retired from Bass Pro a little bit early, started doing that, started building a pretty strong squad,” Emmitt said. “Now, we’re finishing in the Top 10 just about every year. I’m recruiting students from all across the country.”
It didn’t take long after that for Drury’s big breakthrough to arrive. In March 2021, the duo of Cole Breeden and Cameron Smith won the College Fishing National Championship on Oklahoma’s Grand Lake with a three-day total of 41 pounds, 10 ounces. Emmitt said that victory “put Drury on the map.” Instead of having to contact prospective anglers and introduce them to the school, Emmitt suddenly had recruits reaching out to him.
Dayne Kobriger, who grew up in Texas and is now a senior, said the championship was one of the reasons he picked Drury.
“I remember seeing them win the National Championship, and that kind of put Drury at the top of the map for the schools I wanted to go to,” he said.
‘Right in the heart of everything’
A university of less than 3,000 students with a sizable athletics department, Drury can’t match the roster space or resources afforded a few College Fishing programs (although it does foot the bill for all travel expenses to and from tournaments – a significant perk). As a result, Emmitt is realistic about the fact that the Panthers aren’t likely to win the School of the Year award anytime soon.
Still, there’s plenty of draw to Drury.
The school’s biggest advantage is location. Drury is about an hour away from Table Rock Lake and two hours or less from other tournament hotspots like Bull Shoals, Beaver Lake, Lake of the Ozarks and Grand.
“I’m eventually going to move back (home) after school, which is going to suck, because I kind of like it here,” Kobriger said. “You’ve got Table Rock an hour away. Lake of the Ozarks is an hour and a half. Bull Shoals is right there. I mean, we’re kind of right in the heart of everything.”
It’s not just the fishing that’s top-notch near Springfield, either. Bass Pro Shops headquarters are right down the street. In fact, Drury anglers got to volunteer at the REDCREST Outdoor Sports Expo in April, which was held just outside the “Granddaddy of all Outdoor Stores.” That combined with Emmitt’s connections has landed Drury support from and connections with industry giants like Bass Pro Shops, Abu Garcia and Berkley.
“Some of our anglers want to be in the fishing industry, or they even want to be pro anglers,” Emmitt said. “I can open some doors for them in the fishing industry, and I can kind of mentor them on how important it is to support your sponsors. So, that’s our advantage at Drury.”
Eleven years after Emmitt started the program, Drury has settled into a spot where everyone knows the goals – compete for national championships and finish in the Top 10 of the School of the Year standings, which it’s accomplished three of the past five years.
“I tell our guys, I want to finish in the Top 10 every year, and I would love to win one of the three circuits’ national championships,” Emmitt said. “So, that’s kind of our goals every year.
The team used its local edge to make a big jump toward achieving one of those objectives last month. At the third regular-season event of the year, which was held on nearby Table Rock, the Panthers put two teams in the top seven, headlined by Jacob Longlois and Seth Prather, who finished third. That moved Drury up to 14th in the School of the Year standings at the midpoint of the season despite not sending any anglers to the opener on Lake Seminole.
For Kobriger and the rest of the senior class, the remainder of this year will be about trying to get back into the Top 10.
“A lot of the seniors, we do want to finish good in School of the Year,” he said. “We want to try to push into the Top 10, where we normally sit.”