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(caption) Sixteen Hillcrest High School coeds practice casting.
Unusual Program
Hillcrest Sudents Learn Bait-Casting
by Kenneth Foree
If the temperamental, contrary, cannibalistic black bass could see what the Dallas Public School System plans against him, he would eat his fry and sew up his mouth.
For around 1,750 casters will be turned out this year in a pilot course at Hillcrest High School. And, as the program most likely expands in time to all the 22 high schools, it will run up probably to 40,000 annually.
The bait-casting program is a new adventure in the system and fine proof that the administration is thinking.
Not about fishing, but tomorrow because other innovations in that once-dull world of reading, writing and arithmetic include - hang on to your hat - fencing, badminton, tennis, golf!
It all began when Dr. Nolan Estes was brought back to Texas to become Dallas school superintendent. Looking at tomorrow, Dr. Estes asked his headquarters staff to propose innovations.
In physical education, director A. A. Buschman conferred with Morris Brantley, physical education consultant, and his assistant, Charles Lee.
An idea developed: Give the student something that would stay with him long after he had put on his best and marched up for a scroll testifying he had added some of the King's English to his Dallas brand, gained a smattering of trig and enough science, to hoodwink he profs.
Brantley searched backward to a Van Zandt County farm which gave him two tools for amusement: a fishhook and a dog, tools of the oldest sports of mankind.
When Buschman got the typed program he thought of lovely waters, of pulling the plug at the precise spot amid willows kissing the lake goodnight against a setting sun, and peace. Ok.
Not only an OK came from Dr. Estes, who is from Cameron County, where black bass are in the re..... and black and silver sailfish in the Gulf, but he made $1,500 available.
What school, Brantley asked of himself? Then he went to Hillcrest principal Burnett Cox, who, as a boy, had fished that fine stream called Turtle Creek, vast Bachman Lake, that sea of White Rock.
"I Like the carryover idea," said Cox. "Few will be playing football or baseball after high school. They can fish forever.
"We sit here amid innumerable lakes and talk of a 35-hour week. This will give them the finest, cleanest of sports for their spare time."
The tools? Backlashes and tangles breed discouragement.
So Brantley called Bill Carter of Zebco, which put America to casting. Could carter lend 22 outfits? Carter gave them!
So every school day, every school hour platoons of 16 girls, who will not be fishing widows, and 16 boys, all in white, flip practice plugs and around 1,750 in Hillcrest alone will do so.
And those pugnacious underslung-jawed black bass that can foresee the coming of casting thousands or read The News should gobble their spawn and seal their mouths.
Dallas Morning News
Sunday, April 27, 1969
Section A, Page 22
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