Sweatshirts and blankets filled the stands of Bulleit Stadium on Friday evening as the Owls hosted Bloomington South in the high school football regular season finale. Fall has officially began to take shape as Seymour took the field, facing their toughest test of the season in the Panthers.

South was coming off a 68-57 loss to Brebeuf Jesuit, while the Owls defeated New Albany 14-7 on the road last week. Bloomington South did exactly what they wanted too on Friday, controlling the game throughout the evening, leading 35-0 at halftime, eventually taking the game by the score of 42 to 6.

The Panthers moved the ball pretty well all night, not having much trouble. They also had great field position in almost all of their drives, having four in the first half inside the Seymour 50-yard line. Running clock took place for the entirety of the second half.

Seymour showed some signs of promise on defense and was able to score a touchdown on the final play of the game, but the playmaking ability of the Panthers was too much to handle on Friday.

Owls assistant coach Alan Perry spoke on the performance from the team afterwards.

“They’re a really good football team, very well coached and disciplined and we were expecting that going into the game,” Perry said. “I know Coach Moore had preached it to us as a staff and the players and they just came out and made plays, which we knew they were going too. We didn’t respond well early, got ourselves into a hole and that’s ultimately what did us in tonight.”

The first half was all Panthers, as receivers Aaron Clopton, Sam Giles, and Connor Parker all found the end zone off passes from sophomore quarterback Duncan Combs.

Panthers running back Braylen Townsend proved why he’s one of the best in the state, racking up 87 yards and two rushing touchdowns in the first 24 minutes of play. He ended with over 100 yards on the ground for Bloomington South.

The Owls couldn’t get much of anything going on offense, the biggest play on offense was a 40 yard run from Mikey Wright in the third quarter.

Seymour had one final drive to give themselves something to build off of going into the postseason, they did just that, scoring on the final play of scrimmage. Wright hit Jaylan Johnson for a 4-yard passing strike to put the Owls on the board. Johnson ended the night with 9 receptions for 93 receiving yards. Wright was the leading rusher with 61 yards on the ground for the Owls.

Perry spoke about the importance of that final drive for the team.

“It was really important,” Perry said. We preached coming into halftime that we needed to build some momentum going into the second half and into the postseason. So, to get Mikey going a little bit and Jaylan going a little bit as well will build some confidence going into the postseason against a really good East Central team.”

Seymour will host back-to-back Class 4A State Champion in the Trojans for the opening matchup in the postseason on Nov. 1st at 7 p.m.

The team will get two weeks off and Coach Perry spoke about how the team will attack the short break before the postseason.

“A lot of it will be to lock in mentally on the gameplan,” Perry said. “The two weeks is big, during the first week we can really lock in on the gameplan and get our film study done and get some guys healthy. Then the second week we can hit the ground running, because we’ve talked about everything we need to talk about. That first week is going to be a really big mental sharpness week and then the second week we’ll get ready to go.”

East Central dropped their final game of the season 17-7 to Indianapolis Roncalli.

Week 9 — Seymour

Panthers 42, Owls 6

Bloomington South (5-4); 21; 14; 0; 7;

Seymour (4-5); 0; 0; 0; 6;

Scoring Summary

First Quarter

BS: Duncan Combs 9-yard passing touchdown to Aaron Clopton, (Taylor PAT Good), 7-0

BS: Braylen Townsend 34-yard rushing touchdown (Taylor PAT Good), 14-0

BS: Braylen Townsend 2-yard rushing touchdown (Taylor PAT Good), 21-0

Second Quarter

BS: Duncan Combs 8-yard passing touchdown to Connor Parker (Taylor PAT Good), 28-0

BS: Duncan Combs 14-yard passing touchdown to Sam Giles (Taylor PAT Good), 35-0

Fourth Quarter

BS: Hayden Clark 5-yard rushing touchdown (Taylor PAT Good), 42-0

S: Mikey Wright 4-yard passing touchdown to Jaylan Johnson, (PAT never attempted), 42-6

Individual Seymour Statistics

Passing: Mikey Wright

14 of 23-for 127 yards, 1 TD’s 1 INT

Jaylan Johnson

0 of 1-for 0 yards

Rushing:

M. Wright: 8-61, J. Johnson, 5-17, T. Hawkins: 3-10, N. Wheeler: 2-3, L. Shelly, 1-1, Team: 19-92

Receiving:

J. Johnson: 9-93, L. Shelly: 4-30, E. Jackson: 1-4, Team: 14-127