Season preview: This CHS boys track and field season more of a reloading job than a rebuilding one in the wake of the Trojans sweeping three titles: DAC, sectional and regional

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

The boys track and field season gets underway Wednesday at home in a meet with Gary West and Highland, but that didn’t keep Bryan Nallenweg from looking all the way to the final meet of the season in an interview after a practice.
Nallenweg looked two months into the future and put his vision of the state 4x400 relay race into words.
“Those guys are going to be coming down the homestretch in Indianapolis in June hopefully with a chance to win a state title,” Nallenweg said.
The coach bases that hope on having three seniors, leadoff man Louis Raffin, Cal Wisniewski and Nathan Vaughan, all back, and freshman Ben Phillips shaping up as the lead candidate to replace his brother, last season’s anchor man, Aaron Resto.
Nallenweg believes his positive vision can become reality “if Ben continues to progress and Nate, Cal and Louis can improve as much as they did last year.”
The Trojans spent two years flirting with the school record, fell just short, and last season finished seventh in the state with a 3:19.21. North Central won it in 3:14.34.
Chesterton claimed a rare triple last season, winning the DAC, the sectional and the regional. In addition to Resto, the Trojans lost hurdler Kieran Barnewall, thrower Owen Edlen and high jumpers Nolan Johnston and AJ Brandon to graduation. Even so, Nallenweg said that he thinks that if all goes well on the injury and development fronts, the team has a shot to win all three team titles again.
He bases that belief on strong depth in the sprints, distance events, hurdles and relays, throws and long jump.
Any discussion of the team’s depth must start with Vaughan, a Renaissance man of a quick-twitch athlete.
“Nate might be the best all-around track athlete that I remember ever being at Chesterton,” Nallenweg said. “He’s our best hurdler. He’s our best 200 guy. He’s right there with two or three other guys in the 400. He could high jump if we needed him to. He’s going to contend for the state title in the long jump. I don’t think I”ve ever had someone that well rounded.”
His versatility gives Nallenweg the luxury of moving him around in dual meets to maximize the team’s points, based on the strengths of that day’s opponent. As the postseason nears, a decision will be reached as to what events give Vaughan the best chance of placing the highest in events.
In addition to running a leg of the relay that placed seventh at state, Vaughan was 12th in the long jump and 27th in the 200 meters.
“Cal’s not that far off Nate as far as versatility,” Nallenweg said. “Cal can run the hurdles. Cal can run basically any of the sprints from the 100 to the 400. They’re both just tremendous athletes.”
A couple of days before Wisniewski made his long jumping debut at an indoor meet in Portage, Vaughan his teammate would be “a 20- footer, no problem, with no technique, just running down the runway, hitting the board and landing like a cannonball.”
Sure enough, Wisniewski popped a 26-6.75 in his first competition.
Raffin had the team’s best open 400 time (49.23) a year ago and had a 22-3 long jump. Expanding his versatility, he will run the 110-meter hurdles, where he made an instant impression in his first taste of training on 39-inch blockades.
“First practice, he three-stepped all five of the hurdles,” Vaughan said. “You don’t see that very often.”
Even so, it didn’t shock Vaughan because he has high expectations for his teammate.
“Louis, we knew he would be pretty good at hurdling. He’s built for it. He’s tall, he’s really fast and he’s athletic. That’s all it takes,” Vaughan said. “And he’s not scared. That’s a big thing with a lot of guys, they’re scared. Louis was not scared at all. He didn’t care.”
Nallenweg has coached enough great track and field athletes, including state champion sprinter Braden Corzan (check spelling), that he’s not easily impressed. Raffin impressed him.
“Iv’e been coaching for almost 20 years and I’ve never seen a boy or girl who never hurdled once in their life pick it up the way he did on his first day of practice,” Nallenweg said. “I mean, he still has a long way to go, I haven’t seen someone with that much natural ability. But it helps when you come from a family that has had multiple state qualifiers in the hurdles. His brother Matt was our school record holder in the 3s until Kieran broke it.”
Patrick Mochen, who is in the mix for the 4x400 relay and is a pole vaulter, also took up hurdling this spring. Mochen’s progress and tennis star Shane Henry’s hurdling ability give Nallenweg confidence that if he needs to use Vaughan and/or Wisniewski in another event in some meets, the Trojans have the hurdling depth to enable that.
And if Vaughan and/or Wisniewski aren’t running the 100, Weston Moore gives the team a steady force at the shortest distance and the 200 meters and Devin Throw provides depth.
No event is deeper than the 400.
Phillips was “unbelievable” at times in the 400 indoors, Nallenweg said, nothing that he split a 50.4 in a relay race.
“Ben is a tremendous track athlete who was really good in middle school and has run track on the AAU circuit, so he’s got a lot of experience and we’re seeing some exciting things out of him,” Nallenweg said.
Phillips gives the team depth at the 200 as well.
The 4x4 alignment isn’t set in stone yet, according to Nallenweg: “Patrick Mochen was splitting 51s consistently by the end of the year, Weston ran a couple of 52 splits without even training for the 400, and Chris Wilson and Noah Haubold have looked really good so far. We have a good group of 400 guys who will push each other all year.”
Nallenweg also likes the depth the Trojans have in distance events, based in part on them winning the DAC cross country championship in which Ryan Nix placed first.
Nix, Nick Jakel and Ray Hundt run the 1600 and 3200. Spencer Martin is talented in the 800 and 1600, and even the 3200 if needed. Zarek Sierazy came on strong for the 4x800 relay last season, a race where the Trojans could improve enough to qualify for state. Martin came within a fraction of a second of breaking 2 minutes in the 800 and Will Roberson broke it with a 1:59.99. Will Morgan is back as well.
Nolan Harrington and Max Redman lend distance depth.
Moving to the field events, Vaughan gives Chesterton a legitimate shot at contending for a state title in the long jump. He placed second in the Hoosier State Relays, the most prestigious indoor meet in Indiana, with a leap of 22-10.5. There is no replacing Johnston and Brandon in the high jump, but Nallenweg said he thinks Nolan Huley Jax Cleveland have the potential to clear 6 feet.
The top two finishers in the pole vault at state last season are back and they both are from the DAC, so that makes it difficult to go far in the region in that event, but Maddox McKinney, who cleared 13 feet to place fifth in the DAC meet last season, can win some dual meets and Mochen isn’t far below him. All four vaulters who placed ahead of him at the DAC championship are back.
Even with state placer Edlen gone, the football team continues to furnish the track and field squad with quality throwers.
Offensive linemen Carlos Leon (49-1.5 in the winter) and Tyler Nevious (48-4 last season) stand out in the shot put. Nevious is coming off ACL surgery from an injury suffered during football. Colin Kellogg and sophomore Malik Oueslati are progressing well in the discus.
“And Christian Melton is getting better by the week,” Nallenweg said. “I think our throws are going to be solid. We don’t have an Owen Edlen, necessarily, but we’re going to have two or three guys every meet who are going to score solid points for us.”
Overall, even with the key losses from last year, Nallenweg is extremely bullish about the season.
“I think this team has the potential to win all three again if a couple of things fall into place,” Nallenweg said. “But it’s track. Injuries happen. Things happen.”
And sometimes they don’t. If the Trojans can stay injury free, look out.