On Saturday, April 17, Jesuit seniors Carter Morris and Jacob Reinhardt were wrapping up the first-ever Jesuit Bass Team LHSAA Tournament outside of Shreveport, Louisiana on Cross Lake. In their freshman year, the duo co-founded the fishing club, which, after the club’s steady growth to 50-plus members, eventually led to the creation of the bass fishing team under faculty moderator Helen Swan.

The day took a dramatic turn at the tournament’s conclusion when the two Blue Jay fishermen suddenly came upon a submerged boat and three boaters in the middle of the ten-mile-wide lake. The two Blue Jays rose to the occasion with quick thinking and strong water safety habits.

“Jacob had noticed on our ride into the boat ramp,” reports Morris, “an ice chest floating in the water. So he told his dad to slow down. We went and checked it out and noticed two people floating in the water. We figured out that it was three later—two of them were hanging onto each other. It’s about ten miles across and two miles wide, and they were pretty much right in the middle.”

Reinhardt followed up, “It probably took about ten minutes but it felt like one minute. Everything happened so fast from when we heard them to when we were on the way back.”

The tournament organizer commented, “If they had not acted as swiftly and responsibly as they had, this day could have had a much different outcome.”

The story has caught the attention of regional news outlets, and the heroic pair has been featured on WWL with Dominic Massa, WGNO with Ed Daniels, and the Newell Normand Radio Show.

Watch Morris’s and Reinhardt’s full recap of the afternoon below: