A 96th-place finish for Florida's Bobby Lane at last week's Beaver Lake FLW Tour event isn't terrible considering that it was his first non-Top 10 finish all season. But it does drop him to 2nd in the BassFan Rookie of the Year (ROY) Race points.
The new ROY Race leader (and Bassmaster rookie race winner) is Pennsylvania's Dave Wolak, who now has a 7 1/2-point lead over Lane. But Lane has two more shots to win while all Wolak can do is sit on the sidelines and watch.
Other FLW and Bassmaster tour rookies moved up and down as a result of last week's tournament, but notable movement includes:
> California's Stephen Tosh Jr. jumped up eight spots into 10th after a 16th at Beaver, his best finish of the year so far.
> Kentucky's Ramie Colson Jr. went the other way. He dropped seven spots to 11th after a 174th at Beaver, by far his worst finish yet this season.
> Two westerners, Arizona's Cliff Pirch and California's Brent Ehrler improved in the ROY Race standings after good finishes at Beaver. Pirch moved up eight spots into 15th after a 4th at Beaver, and Ehrler moved up five spots into 16th after finishing 22nd.
(PLEASE NOTE: Richard Bennett of Roseville, Calif. was incorrectly listed as an FLW Tour rookie this year. He is the same person as RJ Bennett, who was a Bassmaster Tour rookie in 2004. He has been removed from the 2005 ROY standings, and the remaining rookies have been re-sorted accordingly. Any discrepancy between the text above and the standings below is due to this re-sorting.)