Sam Castetter received the most valuable wrestler award when the Seymour wrestling team conducted its awards program Thursday night in the school cafeteria.
Castetter, who wrestled at 126 pounds, was a regional and semistate qualifier.
“Everybody we put up against Sam in practice got better,” Owls coach Todd Weaver said. “He did the most to get our team better. He worked hard all year.”
Nate Banister and Jake Rotert also were regional and semistate qualifiers.
Banister, who wrestled at 132, was named the most improved wrestler and had a record of 25-14. He was Seymour’s only sectional champion.
Wrestling at 160, Rotert had a record of 35-8 and led the team in wins, pins (25) and takedowns (39).
Rotert received the coaches award, Alex Schlatterer was named the mental attitude winner and Ro Baltazar was named rookie of the year.
Other regional qualifiers were Baltazar at 106, Ty Woods-Weddell at 120, Ben Kriete at 138, Jake Kriete at 145 and Carlos Ortiz at 285.
The Owls were 18-12 in dual meets. They placed fourth in the Hoosier Hills Conference tournament and fourth in the sectional, won the Scottsburg Invitational with a record of 6-1 and were second at the Brown County Invitational with a record of 4-1.
“One thing I was pleased with, I thought our team wrestled more like a team this year,” Weaver said. “There were a little less cliques, and I thought it was a lot more of a close team. At times, I thought we wrestled a lot for each other.
“I thought we had good tournaments. We got fourth place at the sectional, but it felt like it was a runner-up performance. I don’t know how we got fourth place and not third, much less second. I thought we wrestled about as well as we could wrestle. At conference, we got fourth, which is our highest place ever. When we were going down the stretch, I thought we were wrestled pretty well.”
He said he was proud to have three wrestlers qualify for semistate but was hoping to have more wrestlers advance to that level.
“It can always be better,” Weaver said. “We thought we had at least six legitimate chances of getting wrestlers to the semistate.”
All of the seniors received a senior award, and Weaver said he enjoyed coaching that group.
“We had good senior leadership from Banister, Kriete and Rotert,” he said. “They took charge a few times when we needed them to take charge. We even held back one day and didn’t walk out of the office so we could see what they would do and see if they would take charge. They did that for the most part. They were getting the kids warmed up and things like that, so we had some good senior leadership this year.”
The girl wrestlers and team managers also were introduced.
Kate Snook led the girls by placing fifth in the Indiana High School Girls Wrestling Association state tournament in the 170-pound class.