LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Finishing the season at the national tournament isn’t something all archery teams can claim.
Seymour High School, however, can make that claim.
During Saturday’s NASP Eastern Nationals at the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, Kentucky, the Owls shot 3,274 and placed 86th out of 253 teams in the high school division.
Gavin Wessel, a freshman, led Seymour with 281, followed by freshman Brian Westmoreland and senior Jacob Jones with 277s.
Others making up the team score were senior Lane Schroer and junior Dorismar Ortiz with 276s, junior Ava Cooley 273, sophomore Gideon Wells 271, freshman Ashley Collins 270, sophomore Sydni Burton and senior Malaine Lampkin with 269s, junior Victor Gaytan 268 and senior Sotaro Miyagawa 267.
Twelve other Seymour archers also competed that day.
The Owls shot their season-best score of 3,315 and placed seventh out of 28 high schools at the Indiana National Archery in the Schools Program State Bullseye Tournament in Indianapolis in March. While they didn’t accomplish their goal of topping that score at the national tournament, they considered making it to that level once again a great feat.
This is the eighth year for archery at SHS, and the Owls have qualified for the state and national tournaments each year.
At the Eastern Nationals, there were more than 18,000 archers. The top score was 298 — two off of a perfect 300 — shot by freshman Ava Castrogiovanni from Montrose Area High School in Pennsylvania and sophomore Mathew Harper from Maysville High School in Ohio.
In the team standings, Hillsboro High School in Missouri won with a score of 3,453.
Since Seymour won’t be going to the Open Championship this year, the national tournament was the final one of the season.
The Open, which draws teams from around the world, is June 8 to 10 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It’s a couple of weeks earlier and is close to two big events involving SHS students. Several of the archers will be going with the band to Walt Disney World, and then the seniors have graduation right after that. Seymour didn’t have enough people sign up to make an official team, which requires at least 12.