Like so many high school seniors across the land, two Teche Area student-athletes have been celebrating their remaining high school days, including traditional events like the Senior Prom.

Hunter Neuville and Avery Derouen stayed out late a week ago Saturday for that big night at Highland Baptist Christian School. Unbeknownst to most of the happy prom-goers, those two seniors were halfway to winning a bass fishing state championship with two five-bass limits weighing a total of 28.93 pounds.

Hunter, who lives in Loreauville, and Avery, a New Iberian, grabbed a sizable lead earlier Saturday, the first day of the two-day Louisiana High School B.A.S.S. Nation State Championship. They were competing against 106 other two-man teams representing high schools and clubs across Louisiana.

Hunter and Avery really, truly must have enjoyed the prom later that Saturday night. Hunter returned home around 1 a.m., sooner than Avery.

Donna Neuville, Hunter’s mother, recalled the hectic moments in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Hunter, Avery and Hunter’s father, Tony Neuville, the team’s boat captain, were scheduled to leave at 4 a.m. with Triton bass boat in tow to Doiron’s Landing in Stephensville, site of the high school state tournament.

As it got closer and closer to departure time, the Neuvilles were missing Avery.

“Hunter called and called Avery and he wouldn’t answer. We had to call his mom, get her to wake him and get him to hurry over to our house,” she said. “I was a little worried about those boys. But they still got it together like true fishermen.”

“They were wore out. They didn’t get too much rest,” Tony Neuville said with a chuckle.

Avery, the son of Ronnie and Stephanie Derouen, admitted he “stayed up to around 2. That morning, my mom came up and woke me up at 4, when we were supposed to leave. I was pretty tired. It was hard to fish all day.”

Nevertheless, the 17-year-old HBCS baseball player/bass angler still was fishing hard late in the tournament when he caught what proved to be the state title-clinching bass, one that weighed a little more than 2 pounds and culled a 1-pound, 10-ounce fish. It gave the HBCS Fishing Team duo 28.93 pounds, just enough to turn back a rally by East Baton Rouge Bassmasters Jordan Sylvester and McVay Stockwell, who finished with 28.62.

The 2021 Louisiana state champions will fish together again with Tony Neuville at the helm of his Triton bass boat July 29-31 in the 2021 Mossy Oak Fishing Bassmaster High School National Championship at Chickamauga Lake, Dayton, Tennessee.

“Yeah, I’ve got to go to Tennessee. Yeah, I’m kind of excited,” Tony Neuville said.

The boat captain said he figured the two-man team he captained last weekend “had a chance” after opening up a 2-pound lead with a limit weighing 17.20 pounds on Day 1. It was game on.

He said the young men outwardly appeared anything but nervous the second day.

“No, they weren’t nervous. They were working. They’d pass by a cypress tree and hit every angle,” the boat captain said.

The father-son bond and trust were special, Hunter said.

“Dad, he just let me make decisions on where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do,” he said.

After catching 25 nice-sized keeper bass on Saturday, Hunter and Avery caught few less keepers and overall the bass were smaller Sunday.

“It wasn’t too good today,” Hunter said that evening on the way back to Loreauville.

It was good enough to seal the deal, although the weigh-in was nerve-wrackingly close.

Avery said, “I was pretty nervous standing there watching people come in with heavy weights and we didn’t know if they had heavy weights the first day.”

The bass anglers and their boat captain tried to add up the total weights in their head as best they could. While they had a strong feeling they were first, the wait was agonizing.

Donna Neuville said the two high school bass anglers and their boat captain “waited on their names to be announced as the winners, holding in their smiles as much as they could and breathing a sigh of relief after they had just announced the second place.”

She submitted a photo showing the trio standing shoulder to shoulder, their eyes riveted on the digital scale’s readout, during those tense moments leading up to the announcement.

Jim Breaux, assistant tournament director, called the weights and names of the top finishing teams. When he got to the two teams remaining in the running, the next weight and name called would be state runner-up, the other a state champion.

“They announced the second-place team’s weight and me and Hunter just knew it (the state title was theirs). It was pretty exciting at that point,” Avery said.

“Oh, yeah, this is my first year fishing every high school tournament. I came close to winning twice when I could have won it but didn’t. It finally came together today,” Hunter said later Sunday.

Later, he said, “It’s awesome. I had a lot of people congratulate me and all that. That was our last regular high school tournament and we won it.”

He’s looking ahead to the challenge of Chickamauga lake.

“That one’s going to be interesting. I don’t even know how it fishes. I don’t know what to expect over there,” he said.

The state champs have bass fishing in their blood from way back. Hunter’s great-grandfather, the late J.O. Neuville Sr. of Loreauville, was always on the water, targeting bass, especially during the spring, a lot of times in Coon Slough. Avery’s grandfather, the late Ronald “Mousey” Derouen of New Iberia, also was an avid bass angler, an accomplished bass club tournament fisherman.

“Some of my first times fishing I really went fishing for bass and stuff were with him,” Avery said about his boyhood days and fishing with “Mousey.”

His grandpa made artificial lures and gave them to him and his father, Ronnie Derouen. He was in the seventh grade when he started bass fishing more with his dad. As “Mousey” got older, they inherited his bass boat and fished out of that.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.