In a generally even match on a warm Saturday afternoon, a pair of talented feet proved to be the difference. Unfortunately for Seymour’s boys soccer team, those feet belonged to visiting Bloomington South’s Tom Henry Berry.

Berry scored two second-half goals to lift the No. 8-ranked Panthers (2-1) to a deceptively comfortable 2-0 victory. Both of the junior’s scores came on impressive solo efforts in which he feigned and sliced his way through several of Seymour’s normally uninviting defenders.

After nearly 60 minutes of scoreless play, the first goal came with 22:24 left in the game when, fed by teammate Stefan Bartlett inside Seymour’s 18-yard box to the left of the goal, Berry outmaneuvered three Owl defenders before sending a shot into the far-side net.

Berry added the clincher with just three minutes remaining by deftly guiding the ball between and around five defenders and tapping in a point-blank shot.

“That’s a coach’s kid, so he knows what he’s doing,” Seymour head coach Matt Dennis said. “He’s a skilled player. We know he’s going to get awards at the end of the season, but we could have done better in the defensive moments around that.”

Though they were on the wrong end of Saturday’s result, the Owls (1-1) enjoyed the game’s highest moment when goalkeeper Lance Hubbard saved a penalty kick with four minutes remaining in the game.

The free kick was awarded following a hand ball in the box and was taken by Berry, who sent his shot to Hubbard’s left. The diving senior keeper knocked the shot away with both hands and sent his save far enough to avoid a quick follow-on shot by South.

“(Berry) looked one way and normally when high schoolers do that, they go the other way,” Hubbard said. “Also, right-foot kickers go diagonal, so that’s why I dove left. I just read the ball and pushed it down. I try to push it out away from people, too, so there’s nobody who can try to finish it.”

It was Hubbard’s first-ever save on a penalty in a varsity game.

“That’s the hardest thing to do is to get a save on a penalty,” Dennis, a former goalie, said. “When a penalty is awarded, nearly everybody in the stadium thinks, ‘Well, that’s an automatic goal.’ The team might get down, or the guy that committed the foul or the hand ball might think less of himself. The moment the save hits your hands and you pop up, boom, everybody’s focused again. Lance was sure handed there. That’s why we’re looking for him to lead us defensively and get some good results going forward.”

Hubbard said he felt the precise charge his coach described when the ball hit his hands.

“It’s the greatest feeling of all time. It’s amazing,” Hubbard said. “You hear the crowd yelling and I definitely felt we got a lot more energy from that. We had an attack that almost led to a goal.”

Indeed, following Hubbard’s save, the Owls counter-attacked and appeared to have numbers, but a strategic foul at midfield by South’s Max Serafin-Odle, which drew a yellow card, disrupted Seymour’s momentum and rendered the attack punchless.

The Owls’ best chance at a goal came in the closing minutes of the first half when central defender Lane Woodard sent a long pass forward from midfield. Teammate Myles Chandler, South defender Boston Ely and South goalie Josh Lindauer all converged in chase at the 18-yard line.

Chandler poked at the ball with his right foot and knocked it over Lindauer. The shot appeared headed into the empty net but instead bounced off the left post, bounded tantalizingly in front of the goal and was cleared by the Panthers’ defense.

Gaspar Mateo and Chandler later had promising chances inside the final 14 minutes of the game, but saw their shots veer wide of the mark.

In all, Seymour took eight shots at the Panther goal, forcing saves on three of them. South took 17 shots with Hubbard saving six.

“We were unlucky on a couple of bounces and could have gotten a goal,” Dennis said. “I don’t like to use the term ‘moral victory’ because moral victories are losses. I don’t like losing, the boys don’t like losing, but this is absolutely an effort here that we can build on.”

The coming weeks are busy for the Owls, with six games scheduled over a 12-day period. On Tuesday, Seymour hosts Silver Creek, followed by a trip to Bloomington North on Thursday and a return home on Saturday to take on Whiteland.

“We know what our mistakes were today, we just need to fix that,” Dennis said. “The first 15 to 20 minutes of the second half might have been the best 15 or 20 minutes I’ve seen us play in a long time. We had the better of the run of play. We were being bold going forward. There’s a lot there to look at. Thai Daraswad might have had his best game I’ve ever seen him play, especially from a defensive standpoint. It sucks to lose, but I think we can look at this and say it’s close. We’re close. We’re better this Saturday than we were last Saturday. And if we continue that trend, then we’re going to do something this year.”

Bloomington South 2, Seymour 0

Bloomington South (2-1); 0; 2 — 2

Seymour (1-1); 0; 0 — 0

Goals: Henry Berry, (2).