Owls garner fourth shutout of season, beat Patriots 4-0

Seymour boys soccer coach Matt Dennis made a change by starting all of the seniors and foreign exchange students in Saturday’s home match against Heritage Hills.

They responded by helping the Owls take a 4-0 lead in less than 17 minutes of play, and Seymour added a goal in the second half for a 5-0 win, marking its fourth shutout of the season.

“The best part of that (4-0 lead) is we started all the seniors and exchange students, which some of those kids don’t normally start or play,” Dennis said. “The fact that they were able to combine well and get those goals was awesome.”

Lucas Herpel scored the Owls’ first goal on an assist from Daniel Varela at 34:20, and the home team was in the lead for good. Mikkel Birloe made it 2-0 at the 31:20 mark.

“We were able to, without our starters, impose our will on the game, and then when we made the change to go with the (regular) starters and get some of those seniors and exchange students off the field, then we got two more quick goals,” Dennis said. “That just showed how good we are with our starters and how good we are with our reserves. I thought that was key for us. We got off on the right foot, and from there, we got a lot of people playing time that don’t normally get it. That is why we only ended up with one goal in the second half. We were able to start with the seniors and end with the seniors, which was important.”

Jordan Jones’ goal at 25:45 made it 3-0, and Fernando Cervantes closed out the first-half scoring at 23:14. Andrew Bailiff added a goal with 15:02 left in the match. Cervantes and Bailiff both had two assists.

“I told them at halftime I wanted them to combine more,” Dennis said. “I thought we got into a situation in the first half, after we got four quick goals, that we just started being too direct. I reminded them that we have Columbus North on Tuesday and that we need to do things right still. It’s not enough just to get out there and score goals because we can. We wanted to do it the right way. We couldn’t get the goal until later, but we were to able to at least keep possession.

“We didn’t allow a shot to them in the second half, and that’s because we kept possession of the ball. We may not have finished our chances or created as many as we wanted to, but kept good enough possessions that they weren’t a threat to us.”

The Owls had 23 shots to the Patriots’ six. Seymour goalie Chase Salmon was credited with one save.

“The shutout means our defense is doing good work, and it also means our offense is keeping possession,” Dennis said. “Shutouts are not about the goalkeeper and the defense mostly, they’re about the entire team. So the entire team, even with the subs and reserves we had in there, played well enough to keep them out of the net, which is important.”

The Owls take a record of 8-5-1 into Tuesday’s home match with Columbus North.