Staff photo / Preston Byers Hubbard’s Braydon Songer throws a pitch during Wednesday’s win vs. Lakeview in Hubbard.

It was always going to be hard for Braydon Songer to top his junior season. The Hubbard standout posted a 0.33 ERA, broke a nearly 70-year-old strikeouts school record and earned a program-best eight wins in 2025.

And yet, Songer is well on his way to one-upping himself.

After Wednesday’s conference win vs. Lakeview, during which he struck out 14 batters and picked up his fifth victory, Songer has 55 Ks on the season. During the game, the Youngstown State commit also surpassed 250 career strikeouts.

“It would be hard to ask him to do any more than we already have,” Hubbard head coach John Schiraldi said. “When he gets out there, especially on the mound, he’s kind of our stopper. We know that he’s going to go out there and do his thing. We always have to support him, we got to play good defense. But it gives us confidence. We’ve been seeing this now for four years from him. He’s pretty exceptional. I run out of things to say sometimes.”

Songer, who has surrendered just 11 hits in 26 innings on the mound, has a 0.26 ERA this season. Only the Bulldogs on Wednesday have been able to score an earned run against the Hubbard senior.

Songer threw no-hitters against Niles and Girard, and Struthers, while able to get five hits against him on April 8, struck out 10 times in a loss.

Because of his accomplishments, including leading the Eagles to their first district championship and an NE8 title last year, Songer has noticed opposing teams quite a bit more energized when facing him this season.

“Some teams will definitely try to, if they know I’m pitching, they’ll definitely be loud in the dugout and try to get in my head and stuff like that,” Songer said. “You just got to block out the noise. … Every time I’m on the mound, obviously everybody wants to try to beat me. But you got to block out the noise and do what you do.”

Even when he’s not pitching, Songer draws the attention of other teams.

“That’s a tough thing to be able to handle,” Schiraldi said. “He’s kind of gotten used to it when he gets out, ‘Oh, we got him out.’ Or if somebody gets a hit. That just says how good he is, that you feel like you accomplished something when you do it against him.”

Unfortunately for many pitchers, they have struggled to get him out consistently.

Including Friday’s game vs. East in which he hit a home run and a triple, Songer is batting .481 for the season, with four homers, 15 RBI and 12 stolen bases, all of which lead the team.

“A lot of times, the focus is on pitching, and I think it gets lost on people what a good hitter he is,” Schiraldi said. “Last year, he led our team in every offensive category pretty much: average, hits, extra-base hits, RBIs, runs scored, stolen bases. He’s a pretty phenomenal athlete. He can do a little bit of everything.”

Hubbard (9-7, 6-2 NE8) hit a rough stretch during spring break on an out-of-state trip, but since then, has won seven of nine games and recently unseated Lakeview for the top spot in the conference.

While many have contributed to the upswing, including fellow starter and shortstop Jonny Adamson, Songer will likely be the single biggest factor in whether the Eagles can go back-to-back in the NE8 and make a deep run into the playoffs again. That was largely the case last year, when, in his final outing on the mound, he struck out a dozen batters, allowed no runs and hit his pitch limit during an extra-innings district championship win against Norton.

When it came time to pick a starter for their regional semifinal five days later, Schiraldi said at the time that he seriously considered turning to Songer again.

If he finds himself in a similar situation this postseason, Schiraldi may ultimately make the same decision again, but it would certainly not be because of a lack of confidence in his ace.

“If you had to put a guy on the mound to win a game, who are you going to pick? It would be him,” Schiraldi said. “If you needed to get a hit to win the game, I would pick him. If you needed somebody on base to steal a base, I’d pick him. If you wanted the ball hit to somebody to make the last play of the game, you’d probably want it to be him.”