Staff photo by Steve Muscatello Sleepy Eye’s Jacob Berg tosses a pitch during the Indian’s Section 2A playoff win against New Ulm Cathedral Thursday at Mueller Park in New Ulm.

NEW ULM — The art of pitching has been described as the ability to disrupt the timing of a hitter.

Thursday afternoon in a Section 2A winner’s bracket game, Sleepy Eye’s Jacob Berg did just that to the New Ulm Cathedral hitters.

The right-handed Berg threw his first-ever no-hitter, and the Indians used a groundout to score the only run of the game to blank the Greyhounds 1-0 at Mueller Park.

Berg allowed Cathedral just two runners to get as far as second base in the game. One came in the first inning on a walk to Mark Schommer, who would steal second but was stranded there, and one was in the third when Will Scabert reached on an error and was awarded second on a balk by Berg.

After that, he retired the last 14 Cathedral batters in a row.

Aaron Portner took the loss for the Greyhounds (14-4). He fanned five and scattered six hits.

Avery Stevens had two hits for Sleepy Eye (14-5) with Landon Strong driving in the only run of the game.

Cathedral will meet the winner of the St. Clair-Cleveland game Saturday at 1:30 p.m. in an elimination game at Franklin Rogers Park in Mankato.

Sleepy Eye remains in the winners bracket and will tangle with BOLD at 11 a.m. on Saturday at Franklin Rogers Park.

Berg said that he came into this game confident.

“I know that my defense has my back and after I got into the groove after the second inning, I knew I was going to pitch a good game,” Berg said. “I started thinking about the no-hitter around the fifth inning. My curveball started to work again because I had gotten into a slump with that in the second and third innings. I feel really blessed — this was my first no-hitter ever.”

“This is what a playoff scenario is,” New Ulm Cathedral head coach Bob Weier said. “This is playoff baseball here. We had two scoring opportunities and did not cash in early and as the game went on, [Berg] got stronger. We battled and Aaron [Portner] deserved a little better than what happened.”

Sleepy Eye scored the only run of the game in the in the top of the sixth inning when Bethel College-bound Zach Haala led off with a base hit to right field and was sacrificed to second by Nathan Walter.

Carter Brinkmann’s infield single moved Haala to third. Haala scored on a Landon Strong groundout.

“We have been preaching all year about execution both offensively and defensively,” Nesvold said. “We got our leadoff batter on in the inning and moved him over and were able to get him in.”

Weier said that this was the first time in his coaching career that he has been no-hit.

“Maybe baseball percentages caught up with us today,” Weier said. “We have been scoring a lot of runs and had a lot of hits in our first couple of [Section 2A] games.”

Nesvold commented that Berg had not pitched for a couple of weeks.

“You wonder how he is going to respond,” he said. “He was hitting his spots today. This is the way he has thrown all year.”