By Casey Regruth

For The Tribune

NORTH VERNON — Seymour’s baseball team lost 3-1 to Bedford North Lawrence in the semifinal round of the Jennings County sectional on Saturday.

After giving up a total of 19 runs in two losses to Seymour earlier in the season, Bedford devised a new strategy to cool down the Owls’ hot bats.

This strategy consisted of the combined pitching performance of sophomores Cade Mungle and Ryker Hughes.

Mungle started the game for the Stars and utilized his slow, effective curveball to keep Seymour off balance. The lefty pitched the first three innings, allowing two hits and tallying four strikeouts while holding the Owls to just one run.

Hughes, who faced Seymour in the Hoosier Hills Conference tournament, entered the game in the fourth inning. In contrast to his first outing against the Owls, the righty gave up zero runs and just one hit on 55 pitches.

Of Bedford’s pitching strategy, Seymour head coach Jeremy Richey said, “I thought that was a really good move for them. The starter, I didn’t see anything that was really overpowering, but he mixed it up well. We didn’t put together very many good at-bats all day. The Hughes kid, we handled him pretty well a couple of weeks ago, but today, we took a lot of strikes. We were uncharacteristic of ourselves today.”

On the mound for the Owls was senior Aden Burnside, who threw six quality innings. The southpaw tallied more than 100 pitches, allowing five hits and one earned run while striking out five Bedford batters.

“Aden looked good,” Richey said. “He threw well enough to deserve better than what we gave him today. We just made some mistakes. In both innings in which they scored, there were errors that gave (Bedford) opportunities. They got some timely hits in those moments. It’s frustrating that we did that to ourselves.”

Bret Perry closed the game out for the Owls, using only seven pitches to force Bedford into three outs.

Seymour’s only run came in the bottom of the third inning when junior Charlie Longmeier hit a groundball up the middle. The infield single scored Perry, who had reached base on a line drive single to left-center field.

Longmeier, Perry and Jack Pennington were the only Seymour batters to get hits.

The loss brings Seymour’s final record to 18-10, but the Owls will look to continue to improve going into next season.

“Eighteen wins is a good season with the schedule that we play,” Richey said. “It was a big step forward from where we were last year. Hopefully, we’ll take another big step going forward.”

Besides Burnside, the Owls will be missing out on the services of seniors Will Cottrill, Andrew Levine and Jounes Rodriguez next season.

“Our four seniors were great character kids,” Richey said. “They’re going to be a bigger loss than it looks like on paper because they showed up every day and worked hard for us. We’re going to have to fill some holes, and our young guys are going to have to step up.”