Eighteen different athletes score points as the Trojans ride running, jumping, hurdling and vaulting depth to first DAC boys track and field title since 2010

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Forgive Chesterton junior running and jumping star Louis Raffin for not remembering the details of his high school’s most recent DAC boys track and field championship before the Trojans won another Wednesday night at Lake Central. He was only 3 years old.
From senior stars Kieran Barnewall, AJ Brandon, Owen Edlen, Nolan Johnston and junior standouts Raffin, Nathan Vaughan and Cal Wisniewski to hidden heroes senior Ryan Gray and juniors Maddox McKinney, William Roberson and Devin Throw, and so many others in between, this was a night of clutch performances for the Trojans.
It added up to a runaway victory and the first DAC title since 2007, when Steve Kearney was the coach.
Current head coach Bryan Nallenweg’s Trojans scored at least four points in 15 of the 16 events and missed scoring a point by one place in the 3200 meters.
Chesterton scored 147 points, followed by LaPorte 117, Merrillville 107.5, Portage 66, Crown Point 63.5, Valparaiso 58, Lake Central 56 and Michigan City 5.
Counting individual events and relays, 18 different Trojans contributed points to the 147 total.
Upon receiving the seeds for the meet, Nallenweg calculated what the scores would be if everyone from all eight schools duplicated their best season marks. Per that calculation, Chesterton was going to win by three points.
“When you can exceed your point value, that tells you that everyone showed up tonight,” he said. “They did everything that we asked of them and exceeded their expectations in most every event. We had guys who were running five, six events (including trials) tonight who were just gassed, but they all wanted to win this conference title, and it’s a testament to guys sacrificing themselves for the betterment of the team.”
It's the head coach’s job to communicate with assistants and athletes from all the events to take their temperature on things and then cobble together a lineup that maximizes a team’s point potential. Nallenweg found the winning formula and the athletes did the rest.
“It feels good to finally win a conference title,” Nallenweg said. “We hadn’t won one in 15 years, and we knew that we could do some special things this season, so yeah, I couldn’t be prouder of the guys and how they came through tonight, but we still have a lot of season left.”
Unlike at the DAC, a self-contained meet, the sectional and regional meets determine which athletes get to extend their seasons. Only the best advance all the way to the state meet.
Chesterton competes at the Portage sectional Friday, May 22, 5 p.m. The Valparaiso regional is set for Friday, May 29, 5 p.m.
A look at each of Chesterton’s points-earning events at the DAC meet, listed in descending order of the point total for that event:
1. Discus (18 points): Breaking out of a mini-slump, Owen Edlen won with a throw of 154-2 and Ryan Gray, shattering his personal best by a whopping 15 feet, took second with a 149-4.
2. High jump (16 points): Leaping late comers to track and field, seniors Johnston and Brandon didn’t let injuries prevent them from coming through in the clutch yet again. Johnston won the event with 6-9-1/4 leap and Brandon cleared 6-4 for third place. Johnston took three tries at 6-11 and was well over the bar on his third when he nicked it with his lower body.
3. Long jump (14 points): Busy, fast, versatile athletes Vaughan, second place with a 25-5-1/2 leap that matched his personal best, and Raffin, third with a 22-3 that easily eclipsed his lifetime mark, executed jumps with exhausted legs. Prior to the meet, Raffin’s best jump came as a sophomore. His Wednesday jump was 2 feet, 3 inches longer than his longest 2025 mark.
4. 110 hurdles (13 points): Barnewall defeated chief rival John Peters of Merrillville by running a 14.44 to win the event and Wisniewski picked up three points by finishing sixth in 16.23.
5 tie. 400 meters (11 points): Raffin and senior Aaron Resto ran sub-50 times in the same race for the first time. Raffin finished third with a 49.74 and Resto was close behind with a 49.90 for fourth place.
5 tie. 300 hurdles (11 points): Aaron O’Neill (39.06) of Lake Central and LaPorte’s Gavin Wilson (39.08) finished ahead of Barnewall (39.20), and Wisniewski came through with five points for finishing fourth with a 40.93.
5 tie. Shot put (11 points): Still not throwing as well as last year since shifting from gliding to spinning, Edlen threw well enough to take third place with a 48-6. Steadily improving Tyler Nevious picked a nice time for his best lifetime throw (48-4) to finish fourth. It will be interesting to see if Edlen is back to gliding or spinning at the sectional meet.
8. 800 meters (10 points): Gritty runners sophomore Spencer Martin (third, 2:01.06) and Roberson (fifth, 2:02.08) delivered the best half-mile races of their lives. Roberson edged Crown Point’s Jake Metzger at the finish line and sprained his ankle in the process.
“His claim to fame before now was he won the JV race at the Larry James (Invitational),” said proud distance coach Tom Moeller said.
9 tie. 4x100 (eight points): Weston Moore, Devin Throw, Wisniewski and Vaughan ran a 42.43 for second place in a loaded field.
9 tie. 4x400 (eight points): Resto got the Trojans off to a great start and he, Wisniewski, Barnewall and Raffin put their exhaustion on hold for one more event and the Trojans took second with a 3:23.56.
11 tie. 4x800 (six points): Setting the tone for a night of strong relays, the competitors in the first running race of the night held off Valparaiso to earn third-place points. William Morgan, Roberson, Ryan Nix and Zarek Sierazy finished third with an 8:20.76.
Martin, the school’s top 800-meter runner, was held out of the race to preserve his energy and give him a better chance at gaining points elsewhere. The strategy paid off. Even with Martin running, the Trojans would not have finished better than third.
11 tie. 200 meters (six points): Vaughan’s wildly taxing schedule of time trials and jumping begged the question of how much energy he would have remaining for his sixth and final run. The answer: Not as much as usual. He finished fifth with a 22.75. Enter Throw with two big points by taking seventh, covering the sprint in 22.85.
11 tie. 1600 meters (six points): The first of Martin’s two lifetime best times came here, when he ran a 4:26.82 for third place, just .78 points behind LaPorte’s Hunter Quadlin in a race won by Portage’s Shane Conroy in 4:18.23.
“Our distance guys really came through for us tonight,” Nallenweg said.
14. 100 meters (five points): The Michigan City bus was way late, which held up the start of the meet. So that students throughout the region wouldn’t be nodding off in class all day, some of the lost time had to be made up and one of the ways that happened was by shortening the time between the time trials in the 100 and 200. Already tightly scheduled because of his long jumping schedule, Vaughan added sprints to his night just to get to events on time. That could have been a factor in him not running his best 100. Still, he was able to take fourth place with an 11.46.
15. Pole vault: (four points): All of Chesterton’s vaulters have been training hard to try to compensate for star Joe Sandrick missing his senior year with a back injury. It paid off for junior Maddox McKinney, who added a foot to his previous best by clearing 13 feet to finish fifth.
“Big,” Nallenweg said of McKinney delivering a lifetime best.
There are no point standings for individual athletes, but a homemade formula for compiling one involves giving each of the four runners of a relay one-fourth of the team total for the race. Based on that, here is how many points each Chesterton athlete compiled for the team: Vaughan 19, Barnewall 18, Edlen 16, Raffin 14, Wisniewski 12, Martin 12, Johnston 10, Gray 8, Resto 7, Brandon 6, Roberson 5.5, Tyler Nevious 5, Maddox McKinney 4, Throw 4, Weston Moore 2, William Morgan 1.5, Ryan Nix 1.5, Zarek Sierazy 1.5.