Varela senior battles through pain, sets up walk-off win as Vipers advance to GMAC semis
Juan Concepcion could barely make a fist with his right hand or bend his right arm.
Varela’s starting right fielder was hit with a pitch a couple of innings earlier, leaving him with a growing bruise on the inner side of his right elbow.
But there was no way Concepcion was letting his coach take him out of the game.
“There was no way I thought he’d be able to even walk,” Varela coach Lazer Collazo said with a laugh. “All of a sudden he got in my face and was holding a bat and (very colorfully) said, ‘You’re not taking me out. I’m winning this game for my team.’”
Concepcion put his coach and team at ease when he kickstarted a two-run rally in the seventh inning to help the Vipers cap a 6-5 walk-off win over Miami Sunset in a GMAC quarterfinal on Monday afternoon.
Concepcion pushed through the pain he was feeling and swung as hard as he could at a pitch from Sunset reliever Daniel Reyes, sending it to the left center field gap and scoring Javier Caldera after he led off the inning with a single. Concepcion was removed for pinch runner Anthony Harvey, but then ran onto the field with his teammates after Nicolas Machado delivered a game-winning single to right to score Harvey.
“We have a great team and have had a lot of injuries but we have to stay together no matter what,” Concepcion said.
Varela (13-1-1) continued its impressive turnaround season with the victory and will host Braddock in a semifinal on Tuesday. The Vipers, who earned their first trip to the regional playoffs in school history last season, are off to their best start ever.
The teams completed a game that began this past Friday after playing one inning before torrential rains prompted a suspension until Monday.
Sunset (11-7), a team in the midst of its own remarkable turnaround, took an early 3-0 lead in the top of the third on an RBI single by Miguel Gonzalez and a two-run single by Andres Gonzalez.
The Vipers took advantage of some inability to find the strike zone by Sunset starter A.J. Garcia and plated two runs on a single by Sebastian Gonzalez and a sacrifice fly by Concepcion. A baserunning miscue by Gonzalez kept Varela from potentially tying the game in that inning.
Sunset increased its lead to 5-2, but was held in check for the final two-plus innings by reliever Christopher Lussier as the Vipers chipped away with two runs in the fifth before winning it in the seventh.
“We’re putting in the work and expect big things from the Vipers because we’re staying on top,” Machado said.
MORE RESULTS
▪ GMAC quarterfinal - Miami Springs 2, South Dade 0 (4): After the game was suspended on Friday after three innings due to lightning, the Bucs made the trip back up from Homestead on Monday afternoon and were met with a driving thunderstorm when they arrived. The sun eventually came out but the field was too flooded to play. Rather than face a third trip north from their school to play the game (and with other regular season games to play this week), the Bucs opted to declare the game a “no-contest” advancing the Golden Hawks (11-5) to the GMAC semifinals.
Springs, seeded No. 4, will travel to take on top-seeded host Columbus on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. The winner will advance to Thursday’s GMAC championship game at 6 also at Columbus.
BILL DALEY
▪ GMAC quarterfinal - Braddock 7, Southwest 5; Columbus 1, Goleman 0.
This story was originally published April 17, 2023 at 7:44 PM.
