Ryan Nix leads Chesterton to first title since 2009 at DAC boys cross country championship with his first-place finish and first win over Lake Central’s Ben Perschon

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

By any objective measure, Lake Central senior Ben Perschon was the favorite to win the DAC boys cross country race Saturday at Kesling Park in LaPorte. For anybody to beat him, it was going to take an upset.
Yet, after Chesterton junior Ryan Nix kicked to the finish line to become the DAC individual champion, defeating Perschon by 10.7 seconds, nobody from the Trojans’ camp was calling it an upset. The same could be said of Chesterton winning its first boys DAC team championship since 2009.
“There was no doubt in my mind he was going to take it,” said Nix’s classmate Spencer Martin, who returned from a shin injury with a fifth-place finish. “I was 100% sure he was going to take it. I’ve run with Ryan in workouts. Sophomore year, it was me burning him out and for the first time, even when I am in good fitness, he was burning me out. His workouts are fast.”
Still, Nix never had defeated Perschon and only twice had come within 12 seconds of him.
“I definitely think he was expected to win but I don’t think necessarily anyone was counting me out of it,” Nix said.
Least of all Nix himself. Nothing about the way he stayed in Perschon’s shadow throughout most of the race, suggested he was looking to draft him to a second-place finish and the good time that would come with it. He stayed closer to him than usual and then made his move 4,000 meters into the 5,000-meter race on a flat course.
“I put a little bit more in the tank, took 10 hard steps, and got there with him and took him over, and that’s when I knew I could do it,” Nix said.
Perschon is such an accomplished runner that Nix knew that passing him once didn’t necessarily mean he had won the race.
“He stayed right with me for most of it, so I knew I could not let up at all because he’s a got a really good kick and he’s really, really fast too in track, so I knew he would have a kick,” Nix said. “I needed to try to put as much room on him as I could.”
Nix left Perschon in his wake and made a long and strong kick to the finish line with a time of 15:47.3. Perschon, the only other runner to finish inside of 16 minutes, was timed in 15:58.0.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of Ben actually breaking and not being able to get back into it,” Martin said of Perschon.
Lucca Neves, Perschon’s teammate, was third (16:02.3), Crown Point’s Jacob Metzger fourth (16:15.3) and Martin fifth (16:21.2).
Teams are limited to seven runners and the score is calculated by adding the places of the first five runners.
Chesterton had five runners posting sub-17-minute times. Second-place Crown Point was the only other school to have as many as four.
Crown Point was considered the favorite with an asterisk because Martin and Ray Hundt, both coming off injuries, were wild cards. Their strong returns helped to swing the meet in Chesterton’s favor.
Running with fellow senior Will Morgan the whole race, Hundt placed 12th with a 16:46.3, the identical time as Morgan, who edged him at the finish line for 11th. Senior Will Roberson was 14th with a 16:58.
“We knew on paper we had a shot to win it for a couple of reasons,” Moeller said. “One is we’re deep.”
Their places didn’t count, but juniors Nick Jakel (17:11.6) and Nolan Harrington (17:14.0) had the best times of any school’s sixth and seventh runners.
So, Chesterton had the strongest runner up front and the strongest pack at the back of its lineup.
Nix had two reasons to celebrate. He gave a predictable answer when asked which meant more: the individual or team title.
“The team, for sure,” he said. “Everyone on this team has put in work over the summer, so for everyone to experience that reward, it’s really great.”
Nix said that after the 2K mark, he could, “see the gap get a little closer, a little closer, and then I was like, ‘Ok, this is where I’ve got to go and make a move.’”
Former Chesterton cross country coach Tim Ray has helped his friend head coach Tom Moeller on a voluntary basis this season.
“Coach Ray and I talked about how you’ve got to be willing to take yourself somewhere else and push through that because everyone in that point of the race is hurting,” Nix said. “Everyone is in the same situation.”
Hundt put Nix’s accomplishment in perspective: “Ben’s beaten a few of our top runners. He beat Evan (O’Connor, Class of 2024). He beat Spencer, and it just took Ryan, whatever Ryan did, to finally get to him. Ryan just didn’t give up. I guarantee there wasn’t a second in the race he was like, ‘This sucks.’ He was there for the win, and he was there to beat Ben.”
And a rivalry was born.
Chesterton and Lake Central compete in different sectionals. The Trojans are the hosts at Sunset Hill Farm on Oct. 18. LC is in the Highland sectional the same day, so Nix and Perschon will not run in the same race again until Oct. 25 at New Prairie in the regional.