Oct. 24—Gavin Garcia can't help but smile at the question.
The Citadel running back has heard it before, but even he sometimes doesn't have a great twist on his own origin story.
How does a guy who grew up in the small town of Catawissa, on the shores of the Susquehanna River in rural Pennsylvania, and more than four hours from the nearest beach, become a shark fisherman?
"My whole life I grew up hunting and fishing with my family, and as I got older, I got into the extreme ends of both hunting and fishing," Garcia said with a chuckle. "Every year my family would get a house on the Jersey shore, and we'd go out on a fishing charter to catch sharks, and we caught some thrasher sharks or sand tiger sharks, but we always wanted to go after the biggest sharks we could catch."
Garcia was literally hooked on the sport.
When the former Kent State transfer isn't studying film or lifting weights or practicing at Johnson Hagood Stadium, you can probably find him out at Folly Beach hunting sharks.
It's earned Garcia the nickname among his new teammates and the Bulldogs coaching staff — The Shark Hunter.
It's a moniker he wears proudly.
"I think everyone is kind of fascinated by sharks; I know I was growing up," Garcia said. "I watched Shark Week like everyone else. There's just something about fishing for sharks, they are normally the biggest fish in the ocean, and battling them for like 30 minutes or an hour. It's a challenge, but it's really fun for me."
Oh yeah, he's also a pretty good running back, too.
The 5-9, 195-pound graduate student leads the Bulldogs in rushing with 625 yards — he's the third-leading rusher in the Southern Conference — and has a team-leading six rushing touchdowns.
"Gavin is exactly who we thought he'd be when we were recruiting him," said The Citadel coach Maurice Drayton. "He's not he biggest guy, but he's tough and he can run between the tackles effectively. He has good speed, can make guys miss and has the ability of being a home run hitter for us."
Shark Hunter
When Garcia finished his senior year at Kent State, he wasn't specifically looking for a school near the ocean.
He was actually looking for more playing time.
"I wanted a bigger role for whatever team I played on, and I wanted to find a team that wanted to run the ball," said Garcia, who rushed for more than 1,000 yards during his career at Kent State. "I loved my time at Kent State; loved the coaching staff, but they liked to throw the ball around the field, and I was looking for more of a running team.
"I wouldn't say being near the ocean was the main reason I picked The Citadel, but it was part of why I came to Charleston. I wanted to take advantage of my time near the ocean for as long as I could while I was here."
Garcia arrived in the Lowcountry in January and immediately started to fish off Folly Beach on the days he wasn't in class or working out.
He didn't have access to a boat but had watched online videos of people using drones to fly the fishing lines and bait far from the beach — sometimes as much as half-mile from shore.
"Our family bought a drone about two years ago, and we started fishing for sharks off the Jersey shore and were pretty successful," Garcia said.
Initially, Garcia had little luck in the Lowcountry catching sharks because they were mostly in warmer waters during the winter months.
"When I first got to Charleston, I'd go out and get skunked and not catch anything," he said. "I tried to learn as much as I could, and I realized the reason I was failing was because the fish were not here yet. I kept at it, and eventually the sharks started to show up."
It was during the spring and early summer that the hammerhead sharks began to appear off the barrier islands around the Lowcountry.
"Once the hammerheads started to show up, things really started to take off for us," Garcia said.
He invested in a better drone and bigger and better reels geared toward shark fishing. Garcia figures he spent more than $10,000 on his equipment.
It was about this time that the idea of offering fishing charters began to take hold.
"I'd spent all this money on the drone and the equipment I needed to start earning some money to pay myself back," he said.
He put an ad online and got his first charter a few days later.
"Things really took off from there," Garcia said. "I'd get a few charters each week, and I started to make some money."
There was one memorable night when Garcia, along with his father and two brothers, caught a 14-foot hammerhead shark that weighed in excess of 1,000 pounds.
"It took us like an hour to get the shark to shore," said Garcia, who has photos and videos of his escapades on Instagram, @gghooksnhorns. "My dad, my brothers all took turns reeling the shark in. It was a battle."
Side hustle
To say that The Citadel coach Maurice Drayton was concerned about Garcia's side hustle would be an understatement.
"When I found out what Gavin was doing, I was shocked," Drayton said. "I don't use that word very often because I'm rarely shocked, but this was shocking. Every time he went out in the summer, I was worried he might lose some fingers or a hand or something.
"The sharks he was catching were huge. They are wild animals, so they are unpredictable. You never know what they might do next."
Still, Drayton had to admire Garcia's entrepreneur spirit.
"He was starting his own business and making money doing it, so who was I to complain about that," Drayton said. "Gavin is a grinder. He's just going to outwork everyone else, and that's true on the football field and in his business endeavors."
Despite his passion for shark fishing, Garcia's main focus has been on the football field.
When Garcia has been most effective, the Bulldogs have usually won this season. He rushed for 137 yards and scored three touchdowns to lead the Bulldogs past FBS Charlotte in triple overtime. He scored on the Bulldogs' first play from scrimmage during overtime on an electrifying 25-yard cutback run.
"I'm not the biggest guy, so I don't want to get hit as much as some of the bigger backs," said Garcia, who scored 130 TDs in high school. "A lot of my runs in high school were like that. Sometimes it can get me in trouble because I'm looking for the home run when I just need to lower my shoulder and run behind my pads."
He rushed for a career-high 167 yards and scored three TDs in a win over South Carolina State, which was unbeaten and nationally ranked at the time.
"Gavin really stepped up for us and made some big, big plays," Drayton said.
Garcia isn't sure what he's going to do when the season is over. He wants a shot at the NFL and plans on going to Florida to work out and, yep, fish for sharks.
"They get a lot of big sharks down in Florida, especially in the winter," he said. "Not sure where I'll end up, but going down there to work out for the draft and fish would be perfect. I'll be in Charleston until the end of November, so I plan on doing charters until I leave."
Reach Andrew Miller at 843-937-5599. Follow him on X @APMILLER_PandC
