Northwestern High School left-handed ace commits to ACC baseball power Clemson

A special talent from Rock Hill is one step closer to his college baseball dreams.

Ethan Darden, a junior left-handed pitcher at Northwestern High School, announced his commitment to the Clemson baseball program via Twitter on Monday afternoon.

“I’m still at a loss of words and feelings,” he wrote. “I’m extremely thankful for the athletic and academic opportunity (Clemson baseball) is giving me.”

The Trojans’ ace was fantastic in his junior year: He went 6-2 and tossed 101 strikeouts, only allowing 21 hits in 53.2 innings of work. His ERA was 1.04.

Clemson — a relatively consistent top-25 team and College World Series contender — went 25-27 overall in 2021. It was the program’s first losing season since 1957.

Darden is not the first left-handed pitcher from York, Chester and Lancaster counties to commit to an ACC school this summer. Kyle Percival of Andrew Jackson High School announced his commitment to UNC-Chapel Hill last month.

This story will be updated.

This story was originally published July 12, 2021 at 3:32 PM.

Alex Zietlow

The Herald

Alex Zietlow writes about sports and the ways in which they intersect with life in York, Chester and Lancaster counties for The Herald, where he has been an editor and reporter since August 2019. Zietlow has won nine S.C. Press Association awards in his career, including First Place finishes in Feature Writing, Sports Enterprise Writing and Education Beat Reporting. He also received two Top-10 awards in the 2021 APSE writing contest and was nominated for the 2022 U.S. Basketball Writers Association’s Rising Star award for his coverage of the Winthrop men’s basketball team.