2026 season and careers of two all-time Chesterton baseball greats, Rob Czarniecki and Troy Barrett, end late Friday night with a 3-0 loss to defending state champion Valparaiso in sectional semifinal

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com
The Chesterton baseball team needed to continue the level of pitching, hitting and defense they used to win the DAC regular season crown to have a long postseason, and had just one of the three in the home sectional opener vs. the defending state champion Friday night.
As a result, Valparaiso prevailed, 3-0, in the second semifinal of the day, which didn’t get underway until 8:50 p.m. with an overflow crowd of spectators who filled the bleachers, snaked down the left field line and packed the hill overlooking left field.
The loss brought to an end two of the finest baseball careers in Chesterton history. Left-hander Troy Barrett struck out 13 batters in six innings and all three runs he allowed could be traced to defensive lapses. Neither of the two Valparaiso pitchers who combined on a two-hit shutout, Kellen Hosek and Lucas Haas, retired Rob Czarniecki in his three trips to the plate.
Barrett, the DAC Pitcher of the Year, and Czarniecki, the DAC co-player of the year with Crown Point’s Sean Dunlap, were the only ones in the lineup to get a hit.
Both halves of the first inning furnished hints that this was not going to be Chesterton’s night.
The Trojans were visitors on their own field and the leadoff hitter, Czarniecki, drew a walk to open the game. He got a good jump on the second pitch of the game for what likely would have been a stolen base, but Barrett fouled off the pitch and followed with a single to right, putting runners on first and second with nobody out for No. 3 hitter Eli McCellland, who got the bunt down to advance both runners into scoring position for cleanup hitter Caden Hackett, the team’s third All-DAC selection.
Hackett lofted a flyball to medium depth in right field. Czarniecki’s speed made it an easy call for him to try to score because only a perfect throw was going to get him, and that’s precisely what Vikings right fielder Beckett Reaume delivered, a perfect throw. Just like that, an inning-ending double play.
“I thought I got a good read off of it, a good jump,” Czarniecki said after the game. “Just made a perfect throw, and I thought my slide was good, but, I mean, when the ball beats you in high school, you're going to get called out 99% of the time. Got thrown out by my friend’s brother.”
Czarniecki played travel ball with Reaume’s brother Max.
The bottom of the first inning had a bad omen as well when leadoff hitter Trent Gill hit a high popup to shallow right field that wasn’t tracked well and fell to the grass for a double. Gill took third on Will Jepsen’s single and scored on Ben Glass’ one-out single.
Already armed with the knowledge of what was working for him, a filthy breaking ball, and what wasn’t, his changeup, Barrett escaped further damage with his second and third strikeouts of the inning and was on his way to another masterful pitching performance. Through four innings, he already had 10 strikeouts and the score remained 1-0.
Leading off the second, Gary Kirkland reached on a third baseman’s error but immediately was erased on a smooth double play from Valpo’s middle infielders, the second twin-killing in as many innings. Ethan Glassman followed with a walk and advanced a base on a passed ball but was stranded there.
Czarniecki’s next opportunity to try to get something going came with one out in the third. He seared a single to left, where the outfielder didn’t pick it up cleanly, enabling Czarniecki to move to second on the error. He didn’t get past third base and the hard-throwing Haas breezed through 1-2-3 innings in the fourth and fifth.
The Vikings turned a hit batsman and three errors into two unearned runs in the fourth, pumping their lead to 3-0.
It felt like a bigger than a three-run deficit, even with the top of the order coming up in the sixth.
Czarniecki reached base again, this time on a walk. He moved to second with two outs when Michael Szostek, who entered behind the plate in the bottom of the fourth when Hackett sustained a game-ending injury on a foul ball, drew a walk, but nothing came of it.
Haas put the game away with three strikeouts and a walk in the seventh, and the Trojans, shut out for the first time all year, put their gear away for the final time with a 22-7 season in the books, two great careers over.
Czarniecki, an all-state selection as a sophomore when the Trojans won the sectional championship, batted .500 with seven home runs and a 1.553 OPS (on base plus slugging) this season.
Barrett went 10-1 with an 0.56 ERA, had 10 walks, 102 strikeouts and a .146 average against. In his three seasons as ace of the varsity staff, Barrett went 24-3 with 280 strikeouts in 154 innings. He batted .415 this season.
Third-year Chesterton coach John Bogner looked back on meeting Barrett for the first time when he came to Chesterton from Highland:
“I told Troy that when I met him when he was in his back brace, everyone said, ‘This Troy Barrett, he’s good.’ I was like, ‘Who’s this little guy? He’s 150 pounds.’ I had no idea until his back brace came off and I played catch with him for the first time. I’m like, ‘Oh, this guy’s got some stuff.’”
Unless he gets drafted and signs, Czarniecki will continue his baseball career and education at Kentucky of the mighty SEC. Barrett will pitch for Purdue of the Big Ten.
“I was fortunate enough for our paths to cross at the right time,” Bogner said of Czarniecki and Barrett. “And for them to be great human beings and great at baseball, and their personalities, I’m going to miss them immensely, wholeheartedly, but I’m going to sleep better knowing that they have better baseball ahead of them. There will be a whole new chapter in their life where this won’t hurt as much. They’ll have bigger hurts. I hate to say that, but they’ll have bigger hurts. But that just means they’re on a bigger stage and they’ve worked their whole life to earn that.”
Most of that time has been spent working together. This wasn’t the first big semifinal loss they shared. Barrett, Czarniecki and Trojans right fielder Nate Redman played for the State Park Little League team that finished third in the 10U Indiana state tournament.
As is so often the case with teams when the season ends, the players lingered on the field to extend their time together.
“It really sets in with you at the end that you're not going to be able to get up the next day, come in and play catch with the same guy or hit with the same coaches,” Czarniecki said. “It was a blast. I mean, I'm forever grateful for these four years, and not only have I become such a better player, but a better person. It's hard to put into words how much the last four years have meant to me, and all the friends I've made, and... honestly, just the whole experience in general. It kind of closes the whole chapter on high school and it’s going to be different, but you just have to keep going, day by day.”
Barrett expressed similar sentiments and called playing with Czarniecki “amazing.”
“We're best friends,” Barrett said. “We grew up together, so it's always been fun playing with him, and it's just cool watching him, and seeing what he can do. It definitely hurts not being able to play with any of those guys ever again.”
Asked for his takeaway from his Chesterton baseball experience before he walked off the field for the final time in uniform, Barrett’s response was as difficult to see coming as his pitches, delivered from the same slot so precisely with unpredictable locations, velocity and movement.
“Better than Brayden’s career,” Troy said of his brother.
That’s no mean feat because Jack Campbell, Chesterton’s head baseball coach for a half century plus, said he never coached a better shortstop than Brayden, who also was an accomplished hitter and pitcher and is a sophomore and two-year starting shortstop at Purdue University Northwest.
“We’re always fighting with each other about who’s better, so I’ll remember that,” Troy said. “When I left here, I did better than what he did.”