TAKEOFF
PROFILE
By Colin Moore
RON LAPPIN’S LONG GOODBYE
F
LONGTIME TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR PREPARES TO HAND OFF THE REINS
or the umpteenth time, Ron Lappin
took the wadded towel and wiped
out the bottom of the weigh-in con-
tainer. Nobody could say they missed a
better paycheck because a few ounces of
water in an opponent’s bag leaked into
the tray and boosted the other guy’s
weight. Lappin talked into the micro-
phone as he wiped, thanking the anglers,
thanking the crowd of onlookers for
attending, thanking local officials, thank-
ing anyone who had anything to do with
the tournament.
The wiping routine has perhaps
become more of a habit than a necessity,
one of the idiosyncrasies of a man who
doesn’t have many. Lappin’s sameness is
one of the reasons the anglers in this
Costa FLW Series event appreciate him.
Lappin is always there, the guy who alter-
nately celebrates and commiserates with
them, a witness to their elation or disap-
pointment: part of the landscape, part of
the permanence.
The landscape will change in 2019. As
of the Costa FLW Series Championship in
early November, Lappin stepped down
as tournament director and handed off
the job to Mark McWha, another veteran
of the FLW tournament department. In
2019, Lappin, along with his wife, Joan,
whose official title is “tournament admin-
istrator,” will travel to various tourna-
ments and train replacements on the
finer points of organizing and running a
Costa event.
After that, full retirement follows for
Ron, but “retirement” is a relative term,
especially for a 67-year-old already too
busy to take much of a break from the
various projects in which he’s engaged.
A Look Back
Lappin was prepared to live an ordi-
nary life, and his early years might be
described as playing out according to
form. When you grow up in a small town
in the Tennessee River Valley of western
Kentucky, there aren’t many variables.
You go to school, enter the military, or get
a job at one of the plants or other busi-
nesses in Paducah or Calvert City, and
maybe get married and raise a family to
start the cycle all over.
Out of high school, Lappin took a sales
job at Calvert City Lumber Company.
Then, his fishing ability and knowledge of
Kentucky and Barkley lakes encouraged
him to open a guide service in 1976.
Unpretentiously, it was called “Ron’s
Guide Service,” and, as Lappin puts it, he
and customers “went after whatever was
biting best at the time.”
Eventually, Lappin landed a better job
at Air Products and Chemicals in Calvert
City, then joined Ranger Boats part time
from 1987 to 1994 and helped out with
local promotions and special events.
Even then, Lappin kept his guiding busi-
ness, and continued on with it until he
retired from Air Products in 1992. Six
years later, on the first day of September,
he joined FLW and went to work in its
Red Man Tournament Trail, which later
became the T-H Marine FLW Bass Fishing
League.
By then, Lappin knew what bass tour-
naments were all about, and switching
from fishing them to running them was
an easy transition. He led Red Man’s LBL
Division point standings a couple of
years — and even the national point
standings — and brought a tournament
angler’s empathy to the events that he
conducted.
“I think the most important thing
about being a tournament director is that
you’re also a tournament fisherman
yourself,” he explains. “You understand
the emotions of a tournament fisherman
– the good, the bad and the indifferent –
because you are one and think like one.
When you come from that background,
you know what to expect from a fisher-
man when he wins or he loses, or his side
of the story when there’s been a rules
violation, or where he’s coming from
when there’s a disagreement.
“That’s why FLW tournaments have
been so successful; most of the people
who work at FLW fish tournaments them-
selves when they’re not on the road. We
all love fishing tournaments. It’s a great
community to be in.”
29