The Mozart of Fly Casting

Maxine McCormick, 14, before participating in the national casting championships last month at Rogers-Lakewood Park in Valparaiso, Ind.As the competitors in the 2016 Flycasting World Championships arrived at their hotel in Nelijarve, Estonia, some noticed a 12-year-old girl jumping on the hotel’s trampoline.

The girl, Maxine McCormick of San Francisco, was not a tourist. She was their competition.

Maxine was competing in four events in the biennial championships of this niche sport, in which the world’s best handlers of flies and rods test their skills in a series of accuracy and distance competitions. Maxine, instead of tinkering with her equipment ahead of the competition or fretting over…