Joey Payeur
Next month, it will be the Olympic Summer Games in Rio.
Then come September, the World Cup of Hockey will serve as the battleground.
But the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship is getting the jump on kick-starting a good old-fashioned cross-border sporting rivalry between the Great White North and the Red, White and Blue.
For the first time in the FFCBC’s 22-year history, it will be Canada vs. the U.S. in an all-star confrontation involving five teams from each country trying to accumulate the highest combined weight total for their nation.
But Chad Hanson, who will captain Team Canada along with fellow Fort Frances angler and teammate Duane Cridland, isn’t turning to any jingoistic rhetoric in advance of the challenge.
“Everyone’s buddies out there,” he chuckled.
“Sure, it’s for bragging rights but there’s no pressure,” added Hanson, who was contacted by local angler and competition organizer Troy Norman about taking on the captain duties.
“It should just be a lot of fun,” he enthused.
“I think it’s a great addition to the tournament.”
Hanson and Cridland were awarded captaincy honours by virtue of being the highest-finishing Canadian team at last year’s FFCBC with their second-place showing.
Joining them will be last year’s next four best-finishing teams from Canada—all of whom landed in the top 10.
Brothers Rene Cadene (Atikokan) and Morgan Cadene (Cranbrook, B.C.) were fifth last year, followed by Devlin’s Bill Godin and Dave Lindsay from Kenora in sixth.
Also on board are last year’s most impressive rookie team in Thunder Bay teens Nick Vescio and Mitch Siciliano, who landed in seventh.
As for the final Canadian pairing, Hanson said the presence of local angler Denis Barnard, along with teammate Colin Barton, made his team selection strategy easy.
“I didn’t really think it would be fair to not go with last year’s top five Canadian teams,” he explained.
“When I realized that Denis was on that fifth team, that made it certain for me that’s what I was going to do,” added Hanson, referring to one of only three men (Godin and Devlin’s Doug McBride are the others) who, by the end of this weekend, will have competed in every FFCBC since its inception in 1995.
“Denis has finished higher in this tournament more times than probably all the rest of us combined so I had to have him on there,” Hanson stressed.
Meanwhile, the U.S. team will be far from a pushover—led by captains, brothers, and defending FFCBC champs Steve Sandberg (Brooklyn Park, Mn.) and Scott Sandberg (Ham Lake, Mn.)
“The [Kenora Bass International] has done this traditionally and it’s exciting to have this as a little side contest,” noted Scott Sandberg, who spent significantly more time discussing with his sibling the selection process for Team U.S.
“We must have went over it three, four times about how we should do it and how to set [the roster] up,” he revealed.
“This is the first time for it so we want to set the right precedent.
“We decided to have a mix of rewarding the teams who did well last year and still have the flexibility to have the strongest teams from the tournament historically,” he noted.
Using those guidelines, the Sandbergs grabbed two other top-five teams from 2015 in third-place finishers Chad Johnson (Rogers, Mn.) and John Janousek (Nissiwa, Mn.) and the fourth-place tandem of 2011 FFCBC co-champs Richard Rud and Jon Austin of International Falls.
Rounding out the U.S. team will be five-time FFCBC titleists Joe Thrun (Annandale, Mn.) and Jim Moynagh (Carver, Mn.) and the 2012 champs in Mark Raveling (Longville, Mn.) and Mike Luhman (Deer Park, Wis.)
“That gives us four of our five teams that have won the championship, and Chad and John have been second, third, and had multiple top-10 finishes,” noted Sandberg.
Steve Sandberg hoped the inaugural Canada/U.S. showdown will stick around for many years to come at the FFCBC.
“It’s something that can be done at no extra cost to the anglers,” he remarked.
“It give you a little more bang for your buck and it’s something guys can look forward to in the future.”
