Three Rivers, MI — Portage Northern pitcher strikes out 18 in first perfect game under longtime coach Chris Andrews mlive.com/highschoolsports/2021/04/portage-northern-pitcher-strikes-out-18-in-first-perfect-game-under-longtimecoach-chris-andrews.html MLive.com By Patrick Nothaft | [email protected] PORTAGE, MI - Chris Andrews has coached pitchers that led his team to a state championship and hurlers that heard their names called in the MLB draft. But before the 2021 season, he had never been in the dugout for a perfect game. That changed Tuesday, when junior right-hander Ethan Getting threw seven innings of perfection and struck out 18 in a 10-0 win over Three Rivers. Of Getting’s 72 pitches, 62 were strikes, and Andrews said he remembers only one two-ball count in the entire seven innings. “It wasn’t like they were just swinging at bad pitches,” Andrews said of Three Rivers’ batters, “I mean, he just was filling up the zone with every pitch, other than a few pitches that dove out of the zone that they swung at -- and they were just filthy -- so it was cool; it was really cool. It was a good moment.” Portage Northern junior Ethan Getting poses for a photo during the 2021 baseball season. (Photo provided by Chris Andrews) Getting’s 18 strikeouts are also the most Andrews remembers seeing from a Portage Northern pitcher, which is saying something because MLB draft picks Tommy Henry (2nd round in 2019) and Max Schuemann (20th round in 2018) are both Huskie grads, as is Ben Keizer, who signed with the New York Yankees in July 2020. “Tommy was probably close to that,” Andrews said of the 18 strikeouts. “I did have a pitcher way back, I want to say it was probably 2004, D.J. Nordquist, he threw an eight-inning nohitter against Portage Central, and we won 1-0, and that’s the most notable no-hitter I can think of, and I know he probably had about 13 to 15 strikeouts, but I don’t recall anybody having that many strikeouts either.” Tuesday’s pitching performance was not only historically significant for Northern’s program, but it also gave Getting a big boost after opening the season with a rough outing against defending state champ Orchard Lake St. Mary’s, which is once again the Division 2 frontrunner thanks to a roster that includes potential 2021 MLB first-round draft pick Alex Mooney and junior pitcher Brock Porter, who can dial up his fastball to 99 mph. “Ethan started that second game against Orchard Lake St. Mary’s and just got pummeled out of there, so it was good for him to get back to reality with some normal high school kids to go against,” Andrews said with a laugh. “He didn’t look real sharp for whatever reason, but man, (Tuesday), it was just strike after strike with both fastball and curveball. I mean, he was just pounding the zone, so it was impressive.” Like Orchard Lake St. Mary’s, Portage Northern ended Michigan’s last high school baseball season in 2019 hoisting a state championship trophy, and with the bulk of their key players set to return for 2020, they were poised to defend their Division 1 title before the COVID-19 pandemic brought an abrupt end to those plans. The graduation of college-bound baseball players Nolan McCarthy (Kentucky), Parker Brey (Davenport), Gannon Andrews (Purdue Northwest), Dylan Butler (Adrian) and Malcolm Gaynor (Kenyon) left a lot of holes and very little returning varsity experience on Northern’s 2021 roster, so seeing a player like Getting step up gives the whole dugout confidence heading into Thursday’s conference opener against Battle Creek Lakeview. “(Getting’s perfect game) is really big, especially because a lot of our younger guys are just having some arm problems,” Andrews said. “They’re just not really able to pitch for us right now, so we kind of feel a little bit thin, so to have a guy like Ethan go out and just give us a bunch of innings I think is really important moving forward.” Leading the Huskies at the plate in the 10-0 win was junior C.J. Russell, who tallied two hits and two RBIs for an offense that scratched across at least one run each inning after a scoreless first. In his first game since pitching in the 2019 state finals, senior Xander Morris picked up the win in Game 1 of the doubleheader by striking out seven in five scoreless innings of the 12-1 victory. The Huskies have now won four in a row since opening the season with 20-2 and 17-2 losses to Orchard Lake St. Mary’s.