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Photo: Jack Tindel III, left, and Brett Fregia of Lamar State College-Orange finished seventh of 250 teams in last weekend’s BASS Collegiate fishing tournament at Toledo Bend. They qualified for the BASS Collegiate Nationals this summer.

Dave Rogers / For The Record

Not bad for openers.

Lamar State College Orange’s Gators fishing team qualified for nationals in its first tournament of the 2020 season.

The duo of Brett Fregia and Jack Tindel III placed seventh out of 250 two-man teams competing in last weekend’s Bassmasters College Series tournament at Toledo Bend.

Their three-day weigh-in total was 42 pounds, 10 ounces.

Fregia is a sophomore from Orangefield, while Tindel is a freshman from Little Cypress-Mauriceville.

Their high finish wins them a place in the Bassmasters College Series nationals which will be held this summer.

A registration snafu had the Gators fishers on a wait-list, unsure if they could participate until shortly before Thursday’s 6 a.m. sendoff.

“It’s a huge deal, what they did,” Tom Johnson, LSCO’s president, said.

LSCO debuted its fishing team with competition in two tournaments last fall.

Currently, the Gators’ squad consists of two two-man teams. Dagan Leger and Trace Moore finished 140^th over the weekend.

Fregia and Tindel were in seventh place after the first of the three-day competition, with their biggest five-fish bag of the tourney, 16 pounds, 14 ounces. They fell to 10^th after Friday, still high enough to make the top-12 cut for Saturday.

“We never got a big bite during the tournament,” Fregia said. “We caught a lot of fish that looked like basically twins. They looked alike and weighed alike.”

The two LSCO fishermen met at Sam Rayburn during the summer of 2019 and decided to team up.

“I saw he was a really talented angler,” said Tindel, who fished on the LCM team from junior high on.