Fueled by dominant pitching performances, Sitka High routed the Ketchikan Kings in a three-game baseball series in Ketchikan, first winning 3-2 Friday, following up with 24-0 and 16-0 wins in the two games played on Saturday.
The series started with a no-hitter on Friday pitched by Sitka High senior Bryce Compagno-Calhoun. The next day, his cousin, Caleb Calhoun, a junior, followed up with not only a no-hitter but one of the rarest accomplishments in baseball -- a perfect game.
Calhoun struck out 15 batters in a row, not giving up any hits or walks in the five innings of play.
His pitching was backed up by solid catching by Tanner Steinson, and the game ended after five innings instead of seven due to the mercy rule, with Sitka up by 24 runs.
“I just felt quick, and it felt like the whole game was in my hands and I had control," Calhoun said at practice Monday. "I just wanted to deal, that was it, just throw as hard as I could.”
While pitchers occasionally throw perfect or immaculate innings, perfect games are beyond rare in baseball at any level. Sitka coach Kenny Carley said he was unaware of any perfect game pitched in a high school game prior to Saturday.
“I've never seen it, not in high school level, probably I never will again. It's pretty amazing -- 15 batters, he struck out every one of them,” Carley said, noting that Calhoun averaged about 4 pitches per batter. “…It might happen in Little League when the kids aren't quite as good, every now and then you get a dominant pitcher when the hitters aren't that good yet. But in high school, it's unheard of, You'll see no-hitters, but never a perfect game. Someone's always going to get on base somehow."
According to a sports history piece on mlb.com, there have been 24 perfect games in major league baseball going back to the late 1800s. Carley said he and his son witnessed one of those games: they were in the stands at Seattle's Safeco Field on April 21, 2012 when Phil Humber pitched a perfect game for the White Sox in a 4-0 rout of the Mariners.
"The perfect game stuff. I have goosebumps just talking about it, because it's just something you don't see," the coach said. "About 10 years ago, I was able to see it thrown in the pros. That was the 22nd or 23rd ever thrown in history,” he recalled.
Alaskan high school pitchers have thrown a lot of strikeouts, but it is exceedingly uncommon for pitchers to throw 15 or more strikeouts in a game, says Van Williams, editor of the Alaska Sports Report.
Williams told the Sentinel that in his records only a handful Anchorage-area pitchers have hit that mark in the period since pitch counts were kept in high school games in Alaska. They are Carl Colavecchio, who threw 16 strikeouts for Bartlett High in 2021 and Hunter Christian, who threw 15 for the Service Cougars in 2024. Grace Christian's Colton Reger holds the strikeout record for the pitch count era, with 18 strikeouts thrown in a 2022 game. Prior to the institution of pitch count rules, the record for high school strikeouts in Alaska is 19, set by Chad Bentz for Juneau in 1999 and equaled by West Anchorage's Dalton Chapman in 2014, Williams said.
Calhoun threw only 68 pitches in the Wolves' game against Ketchikan last Friday. That number was low enough that he could have pitched again the next day, but he did not. Alaskan pitchers are capped at about 120 pitches, after which they need four days of rest.
The final batter, Carley recalled, used up seven of Calhoun's 68 pitches and nearly got onto base but couldn’t make it.
“He was the first guy to really foul off anything – he fouled off three or four," Carley said. "Then we got worried. We knew in our heads what was going on, but we didn't want to jinx it. So we were all quiet, and then as soon as he got the last strike it was, we knew it was done.”
“It's a once in a lifetime achievement,” the coach said.
Calhoun thinks his team has a good chance at taking the title at the Southeast regional meet at the end of this month, before closing out the season with the state tournament in early June.
“I’m excited for regions, I’ve got high hopes," Carley said. "I just want to see us hit the ball better, and I want to see the pitching stay the exact same" as it's been all season. On offense in the games this past weekend, Sitka racked up 17 hits in game two and 13 in game three.
Kayhi’s pitcher kept Sitka batters off bases and prevented the Wolves from running away with game one, which Sitka won 3-2 on Bryce Compagno-Calhoun's Friday no-hitter. And in Game 3 Sitka senior Levi Hodges gave up only one hit in Sitka's 16-0 win against Kayhi.
"Our bats were working really good, and we were playing really well together,” Hodges recalled. “I thought that I could have walked less people – it wasn't the best game I’ve ever thrown – but I did my best, and we ended up getting another sweep, which was cool.”
He wants to see the team keep performing into the late season.
“I just want to see us keeping up the same intensity that we have as a team and just playing, everyone trying their hardest, playing our best, so we can just keep winning more games,” Hodges said.
Mason McLeod, a junior infielder and pitcher, thinks the team is in a good spot at this point in the season.
“We just practiced hard. We hit a lot, and I think that it's what we really do. We play clean defense, and our bats back it up,” he said.
The weekend’s games were a show of the Wolves at their very best, he noted.
“That's probably one of the best game series I've seen us hit as a team, and we really came together – like everybody was getting two or three hits every game,” McLeod said. “And I feel like that's what really made the difference. Both teams played good defense, they don't have as great pitching as us.”
Coach Carley said that with only a few weeks to go before regionals, his players "are right where we want them to be."
"If we can keep it up for another four weeks, we're going to win a state championship, in my mind. That's the goal,” he said.
The squad faces Petersburg at home Friday and Saturday, and the Wolves will celebrate senior night this weekend.
