This is one in a series of articles highlighting some of the best players in the area heading into the 2022 high school baseball season.
STRATTANVILLE, Pa. (EYT/D9) — The baseball sizzles out of the hand of Bryson Huwar.
It hits the catcher’s mitt with a loud “thwap!”
Pitch after pitch hums over the plate with a combination of velocity and movement.
Bryson Huwar is ready for the season. But the work is far from over for the Clarion-Limestone senior right-hander.
“Personally, I’m never satisfied,” Huwar said. “But when everything is working, it feels so great. (Tuesday) I pitched one inning in a scrimmage against Johnsonburg and struck out three guys, walked one and gave up a dinky hit. But I felt awesome.”
Huwar should.
He’s put in a lot of work on his arm and his mechanics in the offseason. He also overcame a little hiccup in his delivery this summer.
At the time it was perplexing. Usually sitting around 87 mph, Huwar’s velocity dropped to the low 80s.
But a session with a pitching coach ironed out a flaw in his motion and he was back touching 87 again.
“I wasn’t staying back. I was falling forward and losing so much momentum and power on my backside,” Huwar said.
Huwar believes he’ll be lighting up the radar gun in the 90s sometime during the season.
“I’ve been pitching for two months now getting ready,” Huwar said. “I go down to Maryland with my trainer about once every two weeks and work on velo and pitches and he’s really helped me out a lot.”
That doesn’t bode well for the rest of the Keystone Shortway Athletic Conference, as well as the rest of District 9. Teams had trouble making solid contact against Huwar last season.
Huwar was 5-1 with a minuscule 0.91 ERA in 2021. In 30 1/3 innings, he struck out 52 and walked just nine. Opponents only mustered a .172 batting average against him.
Another thing that makes Huwar so hard to hit is he comes at batters from different arm slots.
He can come over the top, sidearm or even submarine — whatever it takes to get an out.
Huwar throws a wide array of pitches.
Over the top, he has a curveball, slider, changeup, splitter and four-seam fastball. Sidearm, he can hurl a two-seamer, changeup and devastating slider. Submarine, he can attack hitters with a two-seamer, changeup and a disappearing sweeping slider.
Huwar, who will play college baseball at St. Bonaventure University, is also dangerous at the plate.
He batted .596 with two home runs, 14 RBIs and 10 doubles.
Because he’s a pitcher, he can wiggle his way into the opposing hurler’s mind when he’s standing in the box. It gives him a slight advantage.
“I saw one pitch (Tuesday) and put it off the right field fence, so I’m feeling pretty good,” Huwar said, chuckling. “I know he wants to get a first-pitch strike, so I try to jump on that. If he gets behind, I know he’s thinking, ‘I need a strike here,’ so I can jump on that, too. You can just smack that thing all day.”
Huwar is high on his team this season and believes the Lions can bounce back from a tough loss to DuBois Central Catholic in the district playoffs.
“We lost a pretty good pitcher in Hayden Callen, but I feel pretty confident with our pitchers this year and myself,” Huwar said. “We were young last year and we’re going to be young again this year, but I think we learned a lot and we’re going to be pretty good, a team to watch for sure.”
