an Organization You Need to Know About.

Bossier City. Take a stroll down Viking Drive in Bossier City, and hopefully you’ll notice the headquarters of a non-profit organization that serves currently serving active/guard/reserves military members in the Shreveport-Bossier community and reaching around the world. Its name— The Every Warrior Network. What is it? Simply put, it’s an organization comprised of civilians supporting our military community. And if you don’t know about them, you should.

To say they are doing great things for our military doesn’t begin to tell you what they are all about.

Prior to 2014, Trey McGuire, the Founder and Director of Every Warrior, began noticing a trend—and that trend was unacceptable to him. While he was serving in his local church, he saw that the more military service members he met, the more he noticed that they were alone. And that was unacceptable to him, and he set out to do something about it.  So, around Thanksgiving of that year, he organized a potluck holiday dinner for active military members who did not have a place to go. According to McGuire, “I wanted to show them some love during that time.”

That initial Thanksgiving meal was held at the Old Reeves Marine building—where approximately 200 military members and families were fed. Afterwards, while cleaning up, McGuire and company hatched a plan to incorporate an organization with the mission to “support, connect, equip, and mobilize the very core of every warrior.” McGuire recalls, “I made a few phone calls, raised a little bit of money, got as many turkeys as we could find.” 

Soon after the very first Warrior’s Thanksgiving Feast, Every Warrior Network was formed. In May of 2015, the Network began with “a passion to serve military members by building relationships with men, women, and families to meet their emotional, relational, physical, mental, and even spiritual needs. The Network’s actions reflect their motto that “This Is Family” as its heart and soul. 

 “Our mission is not about buildings, it’s not about our events. Our mission is to make sure that every single service member that’s hurting finds love, care, and knows that we have their back,” says McGuire. “We want to be that family for them—that herd of support around them—so when life happens, they get the opportunity to go through it with people who really do care for them.”

Alexis attends Parkway High School, while Mason is a senior at C.E. Byrd High School. This was the third time with Bossier Parish High School Fishing they had teamed up together. When they left that bitterly cold morning, unbeknownst to them, they were the team to beat.

The Bossier Parish Bass Team was captained by Bradley Virgillito, Alexis’ father, who accompanied the pair on the water. According to Bradley, the tournament circuit requires each team to have an adult captain onboard who’s in charge of running the boat. To a certain extent, the captain is allowed to advise the team, but it’s up to the anglers to get the bass in the livewell. 

“Team captains like me can advise them where to fish, or with lure selection, but they’re fully in charge of the fishing,” he says.

And fishing they did—all the way to a world record. 

But taking the podium with wasn’t the first time Alexis Virgillito made high-school bass fishing history. In March of 2022, while participating in FLW’s Louisiana High School State Fishing Championship, Alexis and her teammate Taylor Bacot brought in a five-bass stringer weighing 30.3 pounds—becoming the first all-female duo to win a high school fishing tournament in any state.

“Last year Alexis and her team partner Taylor Bacot won the FLW Louisiana state high school bass fishing championship, the first all-female team to do so,” Bradley says proudly. “They fished the championship on Pickwick Lake in Tennessee but didn’t place. Just competing on that level is incredible, just like this year will be for Alexis and Mason.”