BLOOMINGTON – Bedford North Lawrence’s Wyatt Philpott finished third in his weight class during boys high school wrestling action in the 16-team Bo Henry Invitational at Bloomington North on Saturday.
The Stars finished 15th with 45.5 points. Owen Valley won the team title with 307.5.
Philpott won four matches at 138 pounds. He started with a win over Mitchell’s William Dobson (pin in 2:00), then topped Brown County’s Cason Parman (pin in 55 seconds). After falling to Owen Valley’s William Ranard by a 5-2 decision in the semifinal, he came back to stop Princeton’s Elijah Powers (9-0) and Bloomington North’s Yanni Nunez (20-4 technical fall).
Other top finishers for BNL included Rhys Friend (8th at 106) and Ian Fish (7th at 165).
“I am very happy with the performances,” BNL coach Mike Branam said. “The Bo Henry has always been a tough tournament, but this year, they expanded it from an eight-team tournament to a 16-team tournament. That change made it even tougher, and we still had three guys make the podium.
“In my opinion, that is a good finish for such a young team. I think the results will be much different as we continue to learn, grow and mature as wrestlers. All of the guys did a good job. Everyone went out there and showed they could be aggressive and take control of a match. Wyatt and Ian both did an especially good job bouncing back from their losses to dominate their final matches in an impressive fashion.
”We are making progress every day, but we need to keep improving ourselves mentally and physically as we continue to improve our wrestling technically. If we can keep doing those things, we will all have a successful year.”
BNL will compete in the Holiday Classic at Mooresville on Dec. 26.
