Parkway Girls Score State Championship and You’ll Never Guess the Sport
A pair of Parkway High School girls, Alexis Virgillito and Taylor Bacot, are state champions! The Bossier City teens are members of the Parkway High School fishing team and the two made history by becoming the first all-girls fishing team to win a high school state championship anywhere in the USA.
Parkway Pair is Record Setting
In addition to taking home the state trophy, they're the first females to win a North Louisiana High School fishing tournament and the first ever all-girls team to win a Bass Federation event anywhere in the country.
The girls winning streak started in mid-March when they competed in the state championship on Caddo Lake. Alexis, an 8th grader competing with the "big kids," and Taylor, a Panther freshman, have both been fishing since they were small children.
In an article in Southern Living, Alexis' dad, Brad said that earlier in the season, the going was rough. "They zeroed at Toledo Bend, which is the very first tournament of the year," he told the magazine, reiterating that the girl's weren't aiming too high, "We set a goal...for the state championship, to just bring a fish across the scales and not zero."
The Girls Take State
But the duo ended up exceeding their wildest expectations. In the first half-hour of the tournament, the girls reeled in five keepers and they were big ones, weighing in at close to 25 pounds. And from there, calling on their years of experience on the water, the fish got bigger and bigger.
When it was weigh-in time, Virgillito and Bacot were declared the winners, defeating more than 100 other teams from around the state to claim the championship.
And Another Trophy for the Parkway Pair
This past weekend, the girls competed again at the North Louisiana High School Fishing League tournament and again, they came out on top with three fish totaling almost 18 pounds.
Could a National Championship Be Next?
And what's next for the Parkway pair? In late June the record-setting pair will head for Alabama and the high school fishing national championship. And with two historic wins under their belts, who's to say, for Alexis and Taylor, good things don't come in threes?