SYRACUSE – To say Jake Vernon led Concord to a 7-6, 8-inning, come-from-behind baseball win over Wawasee would be a bit of an understatement. Vernon spent his Monday afternoon on the Wawasee campus going 4 for 4 with a triple, a pair of doubles and a walk. In the eighth inning, he singled with one out, stole second, advanced to third when the catcher’s throw got away, and scored the winning run on a shallow fly to center on a play not without some controversy. He was also the winning pitcher, tossing 2-2/3 of hitless relief while allowing one base runner and striking out five. “Jake's special. He's special,” Concord head coach Jim Treadway said. “We knew coming into this year that we had two players, Jake Vernon and Brenden Curry. Brenden has to sit a few more days with a knee injury. Vern is just a competitor. This is the first year he's pitched. He kept us in the ball game. “Jake Vernon won us this game.” Wawasee used a pair of walks and two singles to score three times in the first inning. After Nate Prescott’s two-run triple and Brett Carson’s RBI single in the third, the Warriors led 6-2. The Minutemen countered by chipping away, scoring once in the fourth and fifth, then tying the game in the sixth before Vernon’s heroics in the eighth. Several times Wawasee missed opportunities for a big inning. They stranded eight runners between the third and fifth frames. “Yeah, it’s tough, especially with a 6-2 lead there, and we just let them crawl back in it, and we don’t put ‘em away,” said Wawasee head coach Brent Doty. “We let them get to their guy (Vernon) and when they get to him, they’re tough. He’s tough to hit, and it’s tough to come back from that. “We were one hit away a couple of times. We had one out with runners at second and third, none out with guys at first and second, we had them loaded in the fifth. We’re missing that one key hit at a time when we really need it, and that’s kind of how it’s been so far this year. “Give our guys credit; they battled the entire way, and we had some great at-bats toward the end there. We just came up a little short.” The winning run scored when Vernon arrived at the plate at about the same time as Drew Anderson’s throw from centerfield. Catcher Prescott appeared to get his glove under Vernon’s foot, but the umpire saw it differently. “It is what it is. We made a great throw, they’re tagging and it’s a bang-bang play,” Doty said. “We can’t rely on that to make or break us. (The umpire) is going to make a call, one way or the other, and that’s what it’s going to come down to. he said our catcher bobbled the ball, and we’re going to roll with that.” Wawasee fell to 6-7 overall and after downing Warsaw in the Northern Lakes Conference opener, the Warriors have dropped six straight conference games. Next up for the Warriors is a rematch with the Tigers in Warsaw at 5 p.m. Wednesday. CONCORD 8 WAWASEE 7 (8 INN.) C 020 112 01 – 7 13 3 W 303 000 00 – 6 10 3 Concord – Stauffer (3IP, 9H, 6R, 4ER, 2BB, 1K), Mochamer (2-1/3 IP, 2H, 0R, 0ER, 3BB, 2K), Vernon (W, 2-2/3 IP, 0H, 0R, 0ER, 0BB, 5K) Wawasee – Voirol (4IP, 7H, 4R, 3ER, 3BB, 5K), Hershberger (2IP, 4H, 2R, 2ER, 3BB, 1K), Garza (L, 2IP, 2H 1R, 1ER, 0BB, 0K) 2B – Shortill (W), Vernon 2 (C) 3B – Vernon (C), Prescott (W), Q. Miller (C) Wawasee record: 6-7, 1-6 NLC
