Seymour’s Bret Perry pitches Tuesday night during the 15-0 victory over Trinity Lutheran.
Greg Jones | For The Tribune
Seymour’s Jack Pennington, right, slides into home plate during Tuesday’s win over Trinity at Trinity.
Greg Jones | For The Tribune
Sam Rockey is congratulated by his team mates as he heads to the dugout during the Tuesday game at Trinity Lutheran.
Greg Jones | For The Tribune
Seymour’s Jack VonDielingen, right, slides in for a run during the Owls’ 15-0 win over Trinity at Trinity Tuesday.
Greg Jones | For The Tribune
Trinity Lutheran’s Luke Coomler, left, is thrown out at first defended by Aiden Darlage during the game against Seymour on Tuesday.
Greg Jones | For The Tribune
Trinity Lutheran’s Peyton Pollert pitches during the Tuesday’s home game against Seymour.
Greg Jones | For The Tribune
Seymour’s Skyler Cockerham, right, dodges a pitch during the Tuesday win against Trinity at Trinity.
Greg Jones | For The Tribune
Head coach Jeremy Richey could tell from when he saw his players in the hallway during the day to when they got off the bus at Trinity Lutheran High School, the Owls’ baseball team was excited and ready to get their season underway.
With an experienced group back, Richey was happy to see his team come out and handle business, defeating the Cougars 15-0 on Tuesday night.
“This a very mature group, and we have a lot of seniors, but all 16 of these kids played for us last year,” Richey said. “They understand what it takes to show up and be business like and play the game. Very proud of their attitude today.”
Seymour started out the game with two runs in the first inning. Bret Perry got a leadoff walk, stole second and third base, and Charlie Longmeier sent him home with a sacrifice fly. Jack VonDielingen then scored off an error to give the Owls a 2-0 lead.
In the second inning, Longmeier got his second sac fly to score Perry again, and VonDielingen had a two-run single to score Braden Richey and Jack Pennington.
The Owls were up 5-0 heading into the third, and that’s where Trinity started to hurt itself.
The Cougars allowed seven straight walks to Seymour, and throw in a couple wild pitches and they allowed the Owls to score seven runs in the inning to put the game out of reach.
“They did a really good job on the bases when they got on there,” Trinity head coach Ben Kleber said. “But we gave up too many free bases. Those 14 free bases really hurt us.”
Peyton Pollert was the third pitcher Kleber went to on Tuesday after Kowan Gross and Jackson Trueblood, and Pollert was able to steady the ship a bit.
He finished the game with four strikeouts and allowed three Seymour runs in the final two innings.
“Peyton did a good job,” Kleber said. “The other two really struggled with control, and Peyton came in and filled it up and showed you can stay in when you throw strikes.”
Braden Richey had a RBI single in the fourth inning to make it 14-0 Owls, and then Seymour added one more run in the fifth inning off a wild pitch.
The Owls only had six hits on the night — Perry, VonDielingen and Richey each had two — but Seymour did a lot of its damage on the base path, stealing eight bases.
“I think the aggressiveness and picking up a couple dirtball reads and capitalizing on mistakes was big because offensively, we were not very good tonight,” coach Richey said. “The good news is, we’ve shown the past couple weeks we can swing the bat, but it just didn’t come tonight. We made other things happen. Our base running was really good.”
Scoring runs for the Owls were Perry, VonDielingen, Richey, Pennington, Treyton McCormick, Sam Rockey, Skyler Cockerham and Longmeier.
Perry pitched a no-hitter on the mound through five innings. He allowed one walk to Nathan Voelker in the fourth inning.
“Bret was Bret, and that’s exactly why we chose him tonight,” Richey said. “We have a bunch of good pitchers, but we knew game one, coming over here, we needed someone who would be stable and that’s just Bret.”
Perry had three strikeouts on the night and forced Trinity into a lot of ground balls. Richey was pleased with his defense behind Perry.
“This team has got to be better defensively than we were last year, and we weren’t too bad last year,” he said. “But with all these guys coming back, we have to take more pride on that end, and we did a good job tonight.”
From Kleber’s point of view, he thought his team did a nice job battling with Perry. Everyone on the Cougars’ roster made contact at the plate.
“We put together good at-bats tonight,” Kleber said. “I thought we made good contact.”
Trinity drops to 1-1 on the season. The Cougars opened on Monday and beat Edinburgh 17-0. Tuesday, Trinity was on the receiving end of a game like that, and the Cougars will next play on Saturday.
Trinity will play two games this Saturday at Austin. The Cougars will play the Eagles at 10 a.m. and South Ripley at 12 p.m.
“I’d like us to keep being aggressive at the plate, and obviously we need to throw more strikes,” Kleber said of his team. “We want to get better on the bases and really create some havoc, which is what they did. We just want to keep getting better every day.”
As for Seymour, the Owls will host Lanesville on Saturday at 11 a.m. for their first home game.