With two home runs already in the books on Thursday, Cam Seymour came to bat in the ninth inning with one thought.

“Honestly, I was just trying to hit the ball over the shortstop’s head,” Seymour said. “And I did.

“And it just kept continuing to go out to the trees in left-center.”

Cam Seymour

Seymour’s third home run of the game in the first game of the University of Southern Maine’s doubleheader at UMass-Dartmouth tied a school record for homers in a game. In just the sixth game of his college career, Seymour also set a USM single-game record with 14 total bases (he had a double in his first at-bat) and drove in eight runs (one shy of the school mark) in a 13-5 win.

Seymour, a 2019 Thornton Academy grad from Saco, followed up his first-game heroics with a 2-for-4 effort with two RBI in the nightcap, a 6-5, 11-inning loss that left USM 5-1 this season and 1-1 in Little East Conference play.

“He just had a great day and the thing about it was, it wasn’t against an average team with average pitching. It was against a contender, one of the top teams in our league, with a front-line pitcher,” said Ed Flaherty, in his 36th season as USM’s head coach. “I think on the day we got 18 runs and he knocked in 10 of them.”

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In six games, all as the Huskies’ designated hitter, the 5-foot-10, 215-pound, left-handed hitting Seymour is hitting .458 (11 of 24) with four homers, four doubles and 14 RBI. His other home run came in his first college game, at Husson.

“He is very explosive,” Flaherty said. “If you measured ball exit velocity in batting practice, it’s off the charts – upwards of mid-90s, 100 miles an hour. He’s built strong, a left-handed hitter with a good set up and a real good base and it’s not an uppercut swing. It’s a professional looking swing.”

Flaherty said the ability to generate power also extends to Seymour’s arm. At Thornton Academy he was the Trojans’ catcher and as a senior also excelled as the closer, notching 12 saves in 12 appearances.

“It’s just naturally gifted, his explosiveness. When he pitches he hits 91,” Flaherty said. “He will eventually be our closer but he’s our No. 2 catcher as well.”

What Flaherty said he wants Seymour to focus on first and foremost is being a hitter that uses the whole field and makes solid contact.

Seymour said he’s trying to heed Flaherty’s advice, and Thursday’s efforts were evidence it’s working. After hitting a double to center in his first at-bat, Seymour pulled a curveball left up in the zone just inside the foul pole for a two-run homer and a 3-2 Huskies lead.

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In the sixth inning, Seymour came up with the bases loaded.

“That at-bat I just wanted to get a pitch I could lift to drive in the run,” Seymour said. “I didn’t really feel like I squared that ball up completely and I just kept seeing the center fielder backing up and then it hit the trees.”

The ninth-inning jack was another two-run shot. Seymour became the fifth USM player to hit three homers in one game, and the first since Dylan Hapworth in 2017. A sixth-year senior, Hapworth was on base for Seymour’s second and third homers.

“He was pretty jacked up like all the rest of the guys,” Seymour said.

For all of the USM players, just getting on the field and competing is reason to be excited after getting in just one game in 2020 before the season was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. For Seymour, it meant waiting another long year to make his college debut.

“It wasn’t fun to be honest. You got really prepared for a season and then it just got taken away,” Seymour said. “It took me awhile, probably until summer ball, to get over that.”


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