For The Tribune

Seymour’s Tyler Penegar gained possession of the ball in the opening seconds of Saturday’s match against Whiteland.

He advanced the ball to Cameron Connell, who put the ball in the goal to give the Owls a 1-0 lead 25 seconds into the match.

Seymour led the rest of the way for a 4-2 victory to improve to 2-1.

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The Owls continued to dominate the action with Penegar and Cole Fosbrink attempting shots, plus the Owls had a corner that didn’t go in, before Penegar scored off an assist by Evan Baurle with 28:01 left in the first half.

After Nathan Contreras scored for the Warriors at 19:58, Blaine Spivey got that goal back for the Owls, off an assist from Daniel Hartman, to push the lead to 3-1 lead with 3:24 on the clock.

Owls Coach Matt Dennis said his team played an excellent first half.

“I thought our first half was really good,” Dennis said. “We played some really good possession soccer. We brought extra guys in the attack and played quickly. We played one- and two-touch soccer. It was really, really nice.”

Austin Given scored off a free kick to cut Seymour’s lead to 3-2 with 33:34 remaining.

Reasoner and Alex Westfall had some strong attacks early in the second half before Reasoner scored on an assist from Penegar to complete the scoring with 17:17 remaining.

Dennis said he felt like that was a big goal for the Owls.

“The second half, the game started to get a little bit physical, and we kind of went off the rails a little bit,” he said. “Once we settled down and started to string together some passes again, we looked good, and we got that fourth goal. We needed that. That relieved the pressure, and at that point, the game was over.”

Dennis said he liked having four different players score goals.

“We were getting guys in the box,” he said. “We were getting square balls in. In the first half, we could have scored five or six. We just put a couple over the bar that were on an empty net.”

Dennis praised Evan Baurle for his defense.

“As far as I’m concerned, the man of the match was Evan Baurle in the middle,” Dennis said. “He was phenomenal. He got back defensively. He stopped a lot of what they tried to do on their transitions. Even if it didn’t look like he wanted the ball, he would just slow them down a little bit. He was calm and collected, and he would fight through the traffic and play the simple balls. He was all over the center of the field. He was really, really good. If he plays like that all year long, we’re going to be great.”