Friends, Family On KVD The Competitor

(Editor's note: The following story, written by BassFan founder Jay Kumar, was previously published in BassFan MAG, but is republished here for the benefit of KVD fans who might not have read it. With the Bassmaster Classic happening next week, it's also very timely.)

Kevin VanDam. If you're a BassFan, you know that name. It's the most powerful name in fishing.

He's the most dominant angler of the modern era. He's won just about every major tournament the sport has created. In fact, if he hasn't won something yet, it's only because he hasn't fished it yet.

How about two Bassmaster Classic wins, including 2005 at the Three Rivers in Pittsburgh – the toughest Classic yet? Three Bassmaster Angler of the Year (AOY) points-race wins (multiple runner-ups) and a Bassmaster Elite 50 points title? An FLW AOY win the first year he fished that tour? How about being ranked No. 1 in the BassFan World Rankings presented by Tru-Tungsten for 4 consecutive years, and his current No. 1 rank?

Despite those accomplishments, nobody's ever really asked, Why's he so good? We decided to do just that. But instead of asking people in the sport about what makes VanDam so great, we tracked down people you never hear from. Take a look.

Fish more than Girls
"From a very young age, when we used to go to our grandparents' cottage on the lake, Kevin was out (fishing) from the moment he woke up, and we had to go and find him to get him to come in. And when he was growing up, instead of spending time doing things typical teenagers did, he was always hunting or fishing. I always said he liked fish more than girls.

"I think he's so good at fishing because he thinks like a fish. He just has such focus and confidence in himself. It's almost like he has a personal relationship with whatever it is he's trying to accomplish with a fish or a deer. Honestly, if I went out fishing and didn't catch anything for an hour, I think I'd have enough for the day.

"He goes out for hours on end, and if he doesn't catch a fish, he doesn't give up, get frustrated or change his focus. He just continues with the attitude that he's going to catch a fish. I think that perseverance makes a difference."
– Lisa Hunt, KVD's older sister, an accountant who doesn't fish

100 MPH
"We had a little cabin in Baldwin. Not a great deer-hunting place by any stretch. A lot of does, just a few bucks. He was 15 or 16 at the time and we were bow-hunting. We had a terrible stormy night, and when we got up in the morning I said, 'We're not going.' He says, 'No dad, darn it, you always said the worse the weather, the better it is.' So we go.

"We had tree stands, but it was so windy I was kind of hanging on for dear life. Pretty soon he starts yelling and screaming, and I thought he fell out of the tree. I come down, and he comes running over. I ask him, 'You got one?'

"'I don't know,' he says. 'I think I got one, but maybe I got two. I got up in the treestand, a buck was coming down and I shot him. I know I hit him, but I only waited 4 or 5 minutes because I didn't want the snow to (cover up the tracks). I got down, went about 20 yards and a buck was coming right to me. I don't even think it was the same one, so I shot him. I looked a little bit, but I didn't see anything.'

"We go over there, and sure enough, one of them was a 6-point and one was a 4-point. Just the night before, a gun-hunter, a neighbor, said, 'There's no bucks around here.' But that's just the way it's always been with (Kevin). He's just 100 miles an hour and things happen. He's aggressive and puts 100% in.

"He still has that same love of what he's doing. I was worried for a while he wouldn't find any women – he was all hunting and fishing."
– Dick VanDam, KVD's father, lifelong hunter and fisherman

Fishing?!
"Gary (Rhoades) and I were baseball coaches. I was varsity and he was JV. Kevin played baseball as a 9th-grader and did a great job. When it came time to get ready for baseball next spring, Kevin didn't sign up. Gary went to him and said, 'I see your name's not on the signup for practice.'

"Kevin's response was something to the effect he was going to concentrate on fishing instead. Gary responded to him, 'Fishing? Nobody can make a living fishing.' That's come back to haunt Gary so many times now that Kevin has been so successful. It's so hilarious now."
– Ray Bomeli, KVD's 9th-grade math teacher

The Fire
"In 2001 Kevin offered as a retirement gift to take both Bruce (Panse, another former VanDam teacher) and I fishing. It was a big treat for both of us to go and fish with Kevin. A lot of kids have the love of fish and so on, but I think there's innate ability, talent and other things. It takes a willingness to study and things like that. That was pretty obvious when we fished with him.

"He covers so much more water than I can. He casts 30 yards farther than me, and you would never see any waver or pause or flub-up in his retrieve. So in the course of a day, Kevin would far outfish you. And here he is a professional, he fishes like crazy all the time, and this was a recreational thing and he still had the fire. That was an amazing thing.

"I coached for years, and you realize how much someone has to love something to get that fired up about fishing, or anything. I learned from him that day how to keep your enthusiasm burning. Kevin showed me that."
– Gary Rhoades, KVD's 9th-grade biology teacher

On a Mission
"The thing that I kind of noticed the most is that he was pretty much to himself. He wasn't exactly the big man on campus or things like that. He pretty much had in mind what he wanted to do.

"He did well in school as far as grades. He showed up at school, did his work and enjoyed himself with other people, but there always was this 'aura,' if you will, about him. He was on a mission and knew what he was going to do. And he didn't necessarily share that with tons of people."
– Bruce Panse, KVD's advanced biology teacher his senior year of high school

Restless
"Kevin had his wisdom teeth taken out at the dentist (when he was a teenager). He was supposed to go home and lay down, but he was bugging me so bad I had to go down to D&R Sports (owned by Randy VanDam, Kevin's older brother) and get some (fishing) tapes. He wanted to be doing something.

"I think later that day he did go outside. My other kids had their wisdom teeth out and were home in bed and out of it, but boy, he wasn't."
– Nadine VanDam, KVD's mother, fishes "sometimes" and "likes to throw spinnerbaits" (go figure)

Sees the Seams
"I've never seen somebody who's that much into competition. He's into competition throwing darts, going fishing, everything. If we're walking across the road, someone's going to get across the road first. And he's like that with horseshoes. If you win a game of horseshoes against him, you're going to stay out there until he wins a game, and then you can quit.

"That shows in his performance (on the water). If he has a bad day, look out for what's coming next. Most fishermen, if they have a bad day, you expect them to have another bad day. If he has a bad day, you expect the opposite. He doesn't let 1 bad day unravel the seam, and that's a hard trait to find. It's like a baseball player knowing the next pitch that's going to be thrown at him. He knows what's going to be thrown at him tomorrow (on the water), so he can duplicate what he did the day before, or better it."
– Mark Zona, host, ESPN Outdoors, KVD's good friend

Ultra-Focus
"Our boys were born very early – 15 weeks ahead of their due date. They were doing well in the hospital, so the doctor told Kevin to leave (to fish a tournament) and he would contact him if anything happened. Well, the day he left, the boys took a turn for the worse. They needed emergency heart surgery, and there was no way he could get home in time for that.

"A lot is laying on your heart when your boys are that sick and in the hospital, but he didn't have a job that was right down the road. He had a lot to deal with there in another city, and this was before cell phones were widely used. He was waiting to hear how the boys were doing, but he was trying to prepare for a tournament.

"The boys' surgery went fine, and he continued to fish that tournament. (That was in March 1997, at Georgia's Lake Sinclair, where KVD finished 8th. – Ed.) It's amazing how he could focus on that. Or I don't know if he really focused. He was just in that mode of just doing what he had to do. He had to get it done, as much as he didn't want to get it done.

"It was a very busy time, a scary time, with lots of ups and downs with the boys. But Kevin remained focused and fished through all of it. When he was away from home, he made the best use of his time. It just is amazing how he was able to continue to do well."
– Sherry VanDam, KVD's better half, doesn't fish

In the Stars?
"It must have been in 7th grade. We went to our teacher's house. He lived on a trout stream. It was a small stream, so we decided one of us would go one way and one would go the other. Well, we meet up after an hour and a half and I say, 'What'd you get?'

He says, 'What'd you get?' I whipped out three 10- to 12-inch trout. I felt pretty good about it. He whipped out a sucker from his creel. I say, 'Uh, huh. What else you have?' He had that big grin on his face, you know. He reaches down into his waders and pulls out a 23-inch brown trout, and I just about died.

"Here's one more, from about 6 or 7 years ago. I'd been pellet-feeding catfish and bluegills in my pond, and I put smallmouths in there. They were nice smallmouths – 4- and 5-pounders. You could not catch them on any lure. No way, no how. We tried everything. I told Kevin that, and he's like, whatever. So he came over here and, I'm not kidding, he caught all three smallmouths that came up and fed.

"It's just that luck that guy's got. His stars align. You hold my stars up and they're crisscrossed. His are all straight in a row. I don't know what it is."
– Andy Brylowski, KVD's best friend growing up, big-time hunter and fisherman