Boys volleyball squad opens with wins over Merrillville and Crown Point on opening day and faces LaPorte tonight at home

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

The Chesterton spring sports calendar opened successfully Saturday at Lake Central with boys volleyball wins over Merrillville and Crown Point in the DAC O’Rama at Lake Central, played under a best-of-three format.
Chesterton opened the spring season at 9 a.m. and defeated Merrillville, 25-15, 25-9. For their next match at noon, the Trojans had a more challenging opponent in Crown Point, but still prevailed 25-18, 20-25, 15-11.
The Trojans lost a lot up front to graduation from last season’s 25-5 squad, including 6-foot-7 middle blocker, 6-6 outside hitter Bryton Oliver and high-flying 6-1 outside hitter Jack Rodriguez, but performed well in that area Saturday in St. John.
Even with 6-9 Randy Deutscher at middle blocker, the Trojans aren’t as tall as last season, but have ways of compensating for that.
Early last season, outside hitter Zane Westerlund, now a junior, split time between the JV and varsity rosters and steadily improved. He has taken it to another level after a club season and it showed Saturday.
In the two matches combined, Westerlund led the Trojans in kills (21) and service aces (four) and in blocks ranked second only to Deutscher (four) with three. He added 10 digs.
A junior all-state linebacker and the consensus pick as the top college football prospect in Chesterton’s program, Westerlund is 6-1 but plays taller than that thanks to his exceptional leaping ability.
“Zane’s a big muscle for us at the net,” first-year Chesterton head coach Kathy Dilbeck said. “And he jumps so high.”
Westerlund said he thought, “overall we were pretty good, but I think our front row, we were sitting there flexing on them. We’re strong up front.”
Results on opening day don’t necessarily mean as much as later in the season, but it still was gratifying for the Trojans.
“I have a lot of buddies over there, so I’m glad we won that one,” Westerlund said of Crown Point.
The players look forward to seeing how much they can progress in the second year of volleyball as a full-fledged sport.
“Our blocking could use a little bit more work,” senior Carson Chaffee said. “How we did out of system was the best thing because no matter how off the pass was or how chaotic things were we came to the net and kept it up the whole time.”
Dilbeck needed to shuffle things around with the lineup because libero Adam LaNeave and outside hitter Peyton Dilbeck, the coach’s son, were out sick. Sophomore Declan Ringler, moved from setter to libero and the normal 6-2 alignment with Keith Ward as the other setter, shifted to a 5-1 with Ward as lone setter. Elliot Mehling, who also plays middle blocker, spent his time at outside hitter Saturday
“I thought he did a good job today of just kind of executing anything that was thrown out his way on the right side, and did a good job blocking,” the coach said of Mehling. “He’s kind of like a big wall over there and even when Zane lined up on the right side, kids can’t hit over them, so they have to hit around them.”
Chaffee contributed 10 kills to the cause.
In the season opener vs. Merrillville, Chesterton grew stronger as the match progressed.
“Merrillville was kind of lacking height in the middle so Randy just had a field day with that,” Dilbeck said. “He hit every ball away that he touched.”
Everyone knew that winning the second match of the day vs. Crown Point would be more challenging and the Trojans proved up to it.
“We came out hot in that first set and looked really good,” Dilbeck said. “We kind of got some runs and we started not playing well with some pressure on us and then were able to pull out that first set.”
Some flaws were exposed in losing the second set.
“Defense was just OK and we were running down some balls, we just weren’t making good decisions at the net and just couldn’t put it away,” Dilbeck said.
“In the third set we were able to jump on them, first five points.”
The Trojans never surrendered the lead. The season continues today with LaPorte visiting Chesterton. The JV match is scheduled to start at 5 p.m. with the varsity to follow.