Coach Jeremy Richey said it was nice to see his Seymour baseball team score eight runs in the first inning against Corydon Central at American Legion Field on Tuesday night.

“It was especially nice since we knew they were coming off a big (4-3) win Saturday against Jeffersonville,” he said. “We thought they would be excited.”

Most of the excitement stayed on Seymour’s side of the field as the Owls added three runs in the second inning and rolled to an 11-1 win in five innings.

The Owls sent 12 batters to the plate in the first inning with Bret Perry collecting two doubles, and his second two-bagger came with the bases loaded and produced three runs.

Following Perry’s first double, Vince Wilson singled and Charlie Longmeier hit a fly into right-center that would have been a sacrifice fly, but the ball was dropped as Perry scored.

Treyton McCormick singled to drive in two runs, Skyler Cockerham singled, Aiden Darlage hit a sacrifice fly to center to drive in another run and Braden Richey and Jack Pennington also had singles. Cockerham, pinch-runner Mikey Wright and Pennington scored on Perry’s double. Wilson singled to score Perry.

“We had a good top half of the first inning, and then came out and just really hit the ball well, hit it all over the place and scored eight, which was great,” coach Richey said. “We talked about getting big innings and it just kept going and going. That’s a great start, and we kind of put them away in the first.”

In the second inning, Gavin Leavy and Cockerham hit singles, Darlage walked and the Panthers committed two errors. Pennington hit a sacrifice fly, and the other runs scored on errors.

Braden Richey blanked the Panthers until the fifth. He gave up two singles in the fourth, then walked the leadoff batter in the fifth and allowed two more hits before striking out the final two batters that he faced.

Richey gave up four hits and one run, struck out nine and walked two.

Coach Richey said, “In the fifth inning, it looked like he got a little bit tired, but he hasn’t thrown in a couple of weeks. I thought he did a nice job mixing it up. They have a couple kids with some really big numbers. I know their No. 3 batter (Wesley Taylor) was hitting .540 going into today, and he struck out a couple times. It was a good outing for Braden. I thought they would hit the ball, and he came out and did a really nice job early of shutting the door once we got a lead.”

Richey had two strikeouts in every inning except the fourth.

The Owls had 11 hits with Perry, Wilson, McCormick and Cockerham getting two each, and Leavy, Richey and Pennington had one hit each.

Perry had three RBI, McCormick drove in two and Wilson, Longmeier, Darlage and Pennington all had one RBI. Perry and Cockerham both scored two runs.

With seven different Owls getting hits, coach Richey said, “That’s a lineup we think we can do that with. We’ve kind of settled in a little bit, depending on the day of who’s playing where, who’s the DH. This lineup has been pretty good for us lately. We’ve got a bunch of guys contributing, and it was nice to get some of the other guys in and get some at-bats today also. The offense was really good, and the part I was really happy with is the three runs in the second inning.

“I don’t like the zeros in the third and fourth, but the three after scoring the eight, that’s a big inning for us,” Richey continued. “We talked about extending the lead, and we did a nice job of getting it up to 11-0. I’m very proud of the offense. We made some things happen. We talked about it in practice (Monday) that this group had scored some runs. We thought we were going to have to score, and they made some mistakes defensively, and I think our speed really caused some problems for them.”

The Owls (12-2) will travel to Columbus North on Thursday.