“Winning the national championship was amazing,” Clepper said. “But that was the best part of the entire trip, just having a little girl look up to me and just be like, ‘I want to be her one day.’ ”

Clepper and her partner, Wyatt Ford, bested the other 235 boats in the three-day competition on Pickwick Lake near Florence, Ala., to claim the championship. The victory made Clepper the first female angler to win the title, a validating achievement for the rising senior at Lake Creek High in Montgomery, Tex.