Photo by Brady Dennis Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Josh Vander Plas delivers a pitch at Mueller Park on Friday during a nonconference baseball game against Waterville-Elysian-Morristown.

NEW ULM — How dominant was Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Josh Vander Plas in the Chargers non-conference baseball game Friday afternoon against Waterville-Elysian-Morristown?

On the 87 pitches delivered by the right-handed pitcher, 65 went for strikes as he fanned 15 Buccaneers batters.

And he threw his first no-hitter of his career as the Chargers scored two unearned runs in the second inning for a 2-0 win at Mueller Park.

The only runner that Vander Plas allowed came in the second inning on an error by Vander Plas.

Jacob Androli took the loss for the Bucs, going two innings and allowing both runs.

MVL head coach Jim Buboltz said that the performance by Vander Plas was the result of a lot of hard work.

“He has been playing baseball all year,” Buboltz said, “He was on traveling teams all last summer and this spring until the season started, so he looks like he is in midseason form and his arm looks like that.

“This was Vander Plas’ second straight strong performance this year going four innings against Madelia. He struck out 12 in that game, so he has 27 strikeouts now in 11 innings.”

Vander Plas, who issued just two first-pitch balls to batters in the game, said that it was a fun game for him.

“My guys were behind me — all glory to God — I felt strong right from the start,” he said. “I knew that they were not touching my fastball, KP [Chargers catcher Kaden Peterson] was calling good pitches — it was a blast.”

The Chargers, who play Thursday at Maple River, plated the only runs they needed in the second inning courtesy of two Buccaneers errors and two of the four hits in the game by MVL.

Kyan Kube singled and Gaven Pribbenow was hit by a pitch.

An error on an Aiden Eckberg grounder allowed Kube to score before Pribbenow scored the second run on a wild pitch.

In the top of that inning, WEM got its only base runner of the game when Vander Plas misplayed an Androli grounder.

“That was on me,” he said.

But the right-hander followed up the error by retiring the final 16 Bucs batters in a row.

“I felt stronger today than I did in my last outing just because I got to go all seven innings and I felt really good,” he said. “And it was my first no-hitter of my life.”