EVANSVILLE

The high school wrestling career of Garrett Johnson came to a heartbreaking end Saturday afternoon with a loss in the “ticket round” of the Evansville Semistate.

The Seymour senior fell to 10th-ranked Cale McCoy of Northview 7-2 in the quarterfinals at 138 pounds. The top four in each weight class advance to state.

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“It’s all right, but the goal was to get to state,” Johnson said. “We just couldn’t do it. This has been really my only disappointment about the season.”

Johnson, who lost in the first round of the regional at 132 last year, won his first-round semistate match Saturday, beating Gibson Southern’s Clay Singleton 5-1.

“The first match was better than the second match,” Johnson said. “I felt a little more lively in the first match, and I think I moved better, and it produced results. The second match, not so much.”

The Owls’ other semistate qualifier, freshman Brandon Penegar, lost in the first round at 120. He was pinned in 42 seconds by another Northview wrestler, Austin Cook.

“He took a good, hard shot, and the kid hit one of those moves that’s kind of crazy,” Seymour coach Todd Weaver said. “It caught us off guard, and we went to our back and couldn’t fight off our back.”

Weaver was pleased with the way Penegar competed.

“He was obviously going to come out and compete hard because that’s the kind of kid he is,” Weaver said. “He had a great week of practice and went out and was doing a lot of the things we were talking about. I’m really proud of the freshman to get to the semistate.”