2 student entrepreneurs + a new fishing app = $16K in prizes

Last year, two University of North Alabama student entrepreneurs teamed to co-found a company to make fishing more tech-savvy, fun and accessible. Sam Hathcock of Jackson, Tennessee, and Hayden Blakely of Athens immediately set about refining the concept with mentors they connected with at The Generator, part of UNA Sanders College of Business and Technology.

In April 2026, the young men reeled in $16,000 in one week through two pitch competitions, winning the overall prize and the best video in UNA’s annual BIG Ideas student innovation contest and then taking the top prize of $10,000 in the Singing River Trail Launch Tank competition.

Read on to learn more about their company, CastOff, how they built it and opportunities for student entrepreneurs like them at UNA.

WATCH: Meet UNA student entrepreneurs Sam + Hayden

(Ben Johnson / Hville Blast)

The idea: What is CastOff?

Freshman and finance major Hathcock didn’t plan on becoming an award-winning entrepreneur in his first year of college, although it has long fascinated him. And so has fishing.

Having grown up competing in fishing tournaments, he did not enjoy waking up before dawn to spend eight hours or more on the water. He began building an online community, pairing fishing with real-time digital scoring without the time requirements of traditional tournaments.

Hathcock brought the concept to another business student, Blakely, a junior, who recommended they develop it for UNA’s BIG Ideas competition.

The duo created CastOff, an AI-powered mobile platform that lets any angler compete on any legal body of water, with no live weigh-in required. The app allows everyday anglers to participate in tournament-style competition and keeps fish in their natural habitats.

Learn more about the BIG Ideas competition at UNA.

BIG Ideas + The Generator at UNA: Where ideas become companies

Hathcock and Blakely collaborated inside The Generator, UNA’s 6,000-square-foot student incubator and maker space inside the Joel R. Anderson Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Studies.

Open to all UNA students, The Generator pairs founders with faculty and business community mentors, blends creative maker space with collaborative co-working areas and instills the practical aspects of launching a company.

“It’s okay to fail out here. Students are seeing on a controlled scale that you can actually fail in the real world, then apply that learning back to something different. That’s the only true learning.”
_{UNA Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Mitch Hamm}

Hathcock and Blakely have learned that the process can yield big wins—money they’ll put back into their business in app development and more.

Learn more about The Generator at UNA.

Advice to other student entrepreneurs

Hathcock and Blakely urge other student entrepreneurs not to let a lack of money or experience prevent something they are passionate about, because mentors are willing to turn big ideas into reality, as they’ve discovered at UNA.

In turn, student creativity and innovation inspire their mentors:

“Our students are capable of anything. When we say the sky’s the limit, it really is. The amount of creativity that the student teams put together and true collaboration they have had has been really eye-opening and amazing to me.”
_{Mary-Marshall VanSant, Director, UNA Office of Regional Engagement}

Learn more about the Sanders College of Business and Technology at UNA.