NORTH VERNON — In the 13 spots Seymour competed in on Saturday at the Jennings County Sectional, the Owls placed in 12 of them.

Seven different Owls placed in the top four to qualify for regional next week, two more finished fifth place to be an alternate for regional and three other Owls placed sixth overall in their respective weight class.

As a team, Seymour placed fourth overall with 131 points. Columbus East won with 258, Columbus North had 224 and Jennings County had 153.

Seymour placed higher than Switzerland County (130.5), Scottsburg (108), Madison (79), West Washington (75), Southwestern (41) and Brown County (18).

“Overall, we wrestled well up to the placement round,” Seymour head coach Dan Rasey said. “To place 12 of 13 is very solid and always going to put you near the top of team scores.”

The highest finisher for Seymour was Ricky Bogard, who placed second in the 126-pound weight class.

Bogard (22-10) received a bye and then won by tech fall over Madison’s Danny Mack in the quarterfinal. In the semifinal, Bogard won again by tech fall over Southwestern’s Keegan Gross to advance to the championship match.

He went up against Columbus East’s Liam Krueger (30-2), who was able to score a fall over Bogard.

“Ricky wrestled well to make the finals and ran into Liam Krueger of East, who is in my eyes one of the top three or four kids at the tournament in all weights,” Rasey said. “Tough final for him, but he did enough to give himself a good shot next week at regional.”

Sam Chandler was third place at 152. After receiving a bye, Chandler was pinned by Jennings’ RJ Barberis in the quarterfinal.

From there, Chandler had to battle uphill, but he did just that.

He pinned Scottsburg’s Nathan Byrd and Switzerland’s Gabe Jackson to qualify for the third-place match. Chandler (16-8) then won by a 6-0 decision over East’s Caleb Kirkpatrick.

“Sammy hadn’t wrestled in two and a half weeks, so had to knock some rust off in his first match, where he got pinned,” Rasey said. “But after that, he rattled off three straight wins to place third again, giving him a good shot at regional. These two (Chandler and Bogard) have been in our top three or four skillwise all year, and it is nice to see their hard work pay off.”

Charlie Bruce (106), Dane Botkin (120), Briley Compton (160), Brenden Bridgewater (220) and Jesus Aguilar (285) were all fourth place in their respective weight classes.

Rasey is pleased that both Bruce and Compton will get to experience regional next week as freshmen.

“Also nice to see our two freshmen in Charlie Bruce and Briley Compton get a chance to experience regional as these two will be cornerstones in building this program,” he said. “They have tough draws on Saturday, but I know they will put in the work the next five days to give it their best go.”

Chase Rogers (138) and Logan Cunningham (152) both placed fifth overall. They will both be alternates heading into regional in case someone in their weight class doesn’t meet weight or gets injured prior to Saturday.

AnnMarie Shuler (113), Nic Frady (145) and Mason Nugent (170) all finished sixth in their weight class, and Diego Aguilar competed for the Owls at 195.

Despite Seymour sending a good number of the roster to regional next week, Rasey wanted to see his team capitalize on more of the placement matches. Seymour won just three of 12.

“The placement round could have been better as we only won three of 12 matches,” he said. “We battled in quite a few of the losses, so that is positive to see. We just need to clean a few things up this week for regional and moving into next year.”

Of the 12 Owls that placed, nine of them will return next year, so Rasey is excited about the direction of the program.

Regional will take place this Saturday at 9 a.m. at Jeffersonville High School.