SLEEPY EYE — A no-hitter in baseball at any level is a rarity.

Seeing a doubleheader conclude with a no-hitter for each team involved is even more rare.

In this past Monday’s Tomahawk Conference baseball doubleheader between crosstown rivals Sleepy Eye Public and Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s, each team earned a win — and a no-hitter.

The Indians earned a five-inning no-hitter in a Game 1 win by starter Jackson Huiras, while the Knights won the second game in a combined no-hitter from Mark Anderson and Owen Weiss.

In Game 1, the Indians had their bats working as they cruised to a 13-0 shutout win in five innings. Huiras was equally as strong on the mound for Sleepy Eye, striking out 12 and earning the five-inning no-hitter.

Huiras credited his early success and no-hitter to Indians catcher Caden Evers.

“In the bullpen with my catcher, Caden Evers, we were feeling really good at the start,” Huiras said. “We spent numerous amounts of time doing live pitching and hitting in cages during our inside practices. So Caden and I would do that and we’d battle against our teammates. So when I got up on the mound at first [Monday], I kind of just felt really good at the start and I felt like I was just going to blow it by them and then use my offspeed to spin them up a little bit and move eye-level with the ball.”

As Huiras continued to cruise and his team continued to score, Huiras said he tried to keep the thought of the no-hitter out of his head.

“I’ve always been the superstitious kind of guy, so I never think about it or say it, but I did have a few teammates tell me and I’d just tell them, ‘Knock on wood,’ or something,” Huiras said.

It was Huiras’ first no-hitter for Sleepy Eye and he was glad to get it out of the way.

“That was my first no-hitter,” Huiras said. “It felt good to get it out of the way, too. I was hopefully going for it, but it feels good to get it with the team, especially with Evers — he and I have a really good connection.”

After that no-hitter, it was the Knights’ chance to return the favor.

Anderson started the second game for the Knights and finished with nine strikeouts, four walks allowed and no hits allowed in five innings as the Knights earned a 6-1 win. Weiss pitched the final two innings for Anderson after Anderson was forced to exit due to the pitch-count limit.

Weiss allowed no hits, no walks and got a strikeout to finish off the combined no-hitter.

Anderson’s success didn’t come right away in Game 2 as he had trouble finding the strike zone and ended up throwing 33 pitches in the first inning. The Indians also took a run in that inning for an early 1-0 lead.

“I walked like three in that inning and we still shouldn’t have given [the run] up,” Anderson said. “I picked off a guy at first and then we got into a hotbox and the run scored.”

Despite having to shake off a little early rust, Anderson got his fastball working after that as his team started to get the bats going.

“I was mainly just throwing fastballs the entire time,” Anderson said. “They weren’t really catching up with it, so I just kept going with it.”

Anderson said that the first game’s loss was tough to deal with when it came to momentum for Game 2, but he just tried to pitch well and keep the chance at a win open in Game 2.

“After that first game, we kind of had no momentum after it,” Anderson said. “So I kind of just went out there and I was, like, ‘All right, now I have to get us some momentum back.’ So I had confidence, went out there and just did my thing.”

Weiss entered in the sixth and was glad to be able to continue keeping the Indians out of the hit column.

“We kind of joked in the game when Mark had the no-hitter and we didn’t want to jinx it or anything,” Weiss said. “So when I was out their warming up, I didn’t want to break it either, but I also didn’t want to do anything too fancy and just wanted to make sure to get the win. In between games, we told ourselves we wanted to at least get a win out of [Monday], and I’m glad we did it.”

To be expected, Weiss said being part of back-to-back no-hitters was something he’s never been involved with before.

“I’ve been in a couple no-hitters before where we’ve thrown it, but never back-to-back like that,” Weiss said.

And Monday’s doubleheader also showed that the city of Sleepy Eye has its share of aces up its sleeves.

“Ever since I’ve been in high school, I haven’t been a part of it or seen it,” Huiras said. “But it kind of shows there’s pitchers’ duels and everybody’s got their ace. For us, we didn’t come ready to play [in Game 2] and Mark just threw a heck of a game.”