Jimmy Watson: Breast cancer can't stop WBT angler from competing

SOUTH BOSSIER — Darla Bardelli's story doesn't end with the fact that she didn't weigh in a fish in two days of competition on the Red River last weekend in the Women's Bassmaster Tour.

The fact that the 54-year-old Phoenix, Ariz., resident was fishing at all was something to write home about.

Diagnosed with breast cancer just four weeks before the tournament began, Bardelli didn't see any way she would be able to attend the final WBT stop of the season. With no health insurance due to being self-employed, the captain of Team FisherGirls saw her hospital costs mounting.

Then some good people stepped in.

The owner of Bill Luke Dodge in Phoenix wrote a check to cover her $850 plane fare. When she arrived in Shreveport, Rodney Reeves loaned her a Skeeter boat to use for the three days of competition. Friends gave her rides back and forth to her hotel.

With weeks of treatments staring her in the face, Bardelli was thankful for the donations and the weekend diversion even though the FisherGirl went fishless.

"My trip here came together in 24 hours," said the national radio talk show host. "I'm thankful for what everyone did for me."

With two daughters, who will be tested for breast cancer regularly, Bardelli was preparing to leave Shreveport on Saturday after final weigh-in and face the challenges ahead.

"Your life changes at the 'C' word," Bardelli said. "I'm an otherwise healthy person who has breast cancer."

And Bardelli doesn't expect to let the disease keep her off the WBT fisheries in 2008.

"The trail will start up again in six months and I plan on fishing," she said.

Women enjoy relationships

There are lots of hugs, tears and cheers being spread around the WBT anglers Saturday afternoon.

Unlike men's tour events, the women treat their trail as a social event that just happens to have rods, reels and high powered motor boats. Think Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood on the banks of the Red River with a World Wide Web audience looking on.

"It's tremendous to fish with all these people, and I especially enjoyed fishing with a great partner from my home state of Tennessee today (Cindy Hill)," Jennifer Nevans said. "We had a great time and I'm hooked. I'll be back next year."

There were the obligatory sponsorship "thanks," a few salutes to husbands, friends and family members for being there to support them and a whole lot of "I can't wait until next year."

Emblematic of the women's approach to competitive fishing was Texan Charlotte Frazier, a co-angler, who made the 25-member championship round only to come in without a fish. She did pull a couple of large, fish key rings out of her weighbag on the WBT stage and said, "Look what granny got," to her grandchildren."

Frazier's antics drew a few laughs and then tears with her comments about her father who died a couple of weeks before the event.

"I dedicated this tournament to him. He loved eating orange slices and eating those helped me catch fish, while gaining about 20 pounds during the tournament," Frazier said. "I just didn't have enough of them left today."

While the two-year-old WBT is going through the same growing pains NCAA women's basketball and the WNBA continues to go through with lower purses and less national exposure than the men, it continues making strides.

And there was some talk on Sunday there will be some positive additions to the trail when the event kicks off 2008 in April at an undetermined site.

More television coverage would be nice. More money would be even nicer. But it will be hard to improve on the camaraderie that the tour participants already enjoy.