Receiving individual awards at the Seymour wrestling banquet was, sitting from left, Sam Castetter, Dunigan Huddleston and Rolando Baltazar; back row is Chase Rogers, Dane Botkin and Sam Chandler.
Dylan Wallace | The Tribune
The Seymour wrestling team gathered in the cafeteria at Seymour High School on Tuesday evening to celebrate its 2021-2022 season.
It was the first season at the helm for head coach Dan Rasey, who was spending his first year in Seymour.
Rasey said he didn’t know much about Seymour aside from the popular things like John Mellencamp that come from a google search, but he thanked all the parents, athletes and assistant coaches for welcoming him in and allowing him to lead the Owls on the mat this past winter.
After his opening remarks, Rasey spent time talking about each individual wrestler before handing out the individual awards for the season.
Rasey first handed out the academic all-state awards. To qualify, the athletes had to be a part of the sectional roster, have a 3.7 GPA or better and only juniors and seniors qualified.
The three Owls who earned academic all-state were Chase Rogers, Sam Chandler and Rolando Baltazar.
“Being a student-athlete is the most important thing I try to teach,” Rasey said. “Too many times I feel like we get caught up in the idea that we’re athletic students. As a teacher, I’ll never advocate that. We’re student-athletes and these three young men are the epitome of the example of that.”
Brandon Mora earned the most improved award.
Freshman of the year went to Dane Botkin.
“When you have a freshman that qualifies that semistate, and he’s the only one on the team that qualifies for semistate, that pretty well skews the data for freshman of the year,” Rasey said.
A wrinkle that Rasey does that is different than most teams is he doesn’t name team captains before the season starts. He feels as if it could limit others if they don’t receive team captain, and he doesn’t believe leadership can be forced on anyone.
Instead, Rasey decides to hand out the team captain awards after the season ends, and it’s voted on by the wrestlers on the team.
The two team captains were Dunigan Huddleston and Sam Castetter.
“This by no means has to be a senior award, but this year’s team captains just so happened to be two seniors,” Rasey said.
The most valuable wrestler award was given to Baltazar, and it was voted on by his teammates.
Baltazar led the Owls in wins on the season in matches wrestled, so discounting forfeits, and he also qualified for regionals.
“He often times is giving up size to pretty much anyone he wrestled,” Rasey said. “He sacrifices so much to help out the team. This young man does everything you need to be a part of that team.”
The final award Rasey handed out was the Owl award, which is like the coaches award.
That award was given to Chandler.
“What it means to be a contributing member of the Seymour family,” Rasey said. “One of those kids that you know when he goes out and is wearing something that says ‘Seymour wrestling’ you know he’s representing the epitome of it, will do everything in his power to help out anyone on this team.”
The final thing Rasey said to his team was he challenged them to get better in the offseason.
The Owls were a young team this season, so Rasey believes if everyone keeps sticking with it and continues to grow, it will only help Seymour’s program grow as a whole and become more competitive.