Senior reserves Joey DeMeo, Alex Zairis and Luke Kisala make Chesterton a closer, better football team in their own different ways

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

The Chesterton football players with the loudest numbers draw the loudest cheers and boldest headlines, and that’s as it should be. They have earned the love.
Linebacker Lucas Anderson leads the Trojans in tackles (67), tackles for loss (six), interceptions (four), fumble recoveries (two, tied with Colin Kellogg) and defensive touchdowns (three).
Andrew Goveia leads the team in rushing yards (780) and touchdowns (seven). Louis Raffin has the most receptions (32), receiving yards (425) and touchdowns (three). Hunter Boyd has thrown for 1,115 yards, completed 60.8% of his passes and thrown nine touchdown passes with just three interceptions.
Linebacker Zane Westerlund ranks second in tackles (55) and tackles for loss (five), leads the team with four sacks and has forced two fumbles.
They’re the biggest playmakers on Chesterton’s roster and if all healthy for the game give the Trojans their best shot at staging an upset tonight at Merrillville (6-2 overall, 5-1 in the DAC).
But it takes more than stars for a football team to stay as closely knit as this year’s Trojans (5-3, 4-2). It takes program guys who stick it out for four years regardless of whether they ever earn starting assignments.
It takes seniors like reserve defensive backs Alex Zairis, Luke Kisala and Joey DeMeo.
Zairis has earned the most snaps of the three, is on all the special teams except extra points, and usually is a reserve safety but also has started. He and Kisala are on the field in Chesterton’s dime packages (six defensive backs). DeMeo’s appearances tend to be late in lopsided games.
“A successful team, a successful business, a successful organization has to have a lot of those support role people,” Trojans head coach Mark Peterson said. “A lot of businesses can’t survive without it. You can have the head of the program, but if you don’t have support in the wings and in the shadows, then the program isn’t as successful. Those guys are keys to our success this year.”
Peterson shared what each of three brings to the team.
“Joey’s an eminent program kid,” Peterson said of DeMeo, whose height generously is listed at 5-foot-8 on the roster, his weight at 175 pounds. “He’s buddies with everybody. He’s great to have in the program. I love having him around. He has a great work ethic, and a great mentality and great attitude. He might not be playing and starting every night but he’s always ready, always on the alert. He’s a kid who if he were three or four inches taller, maybe 10, 15 pounds heavier, he’d probably be a full-time guy. What a great teammate.”
DeMeo is taking a civil engineering internship and is thinking about majoring in that at Purdue.
Kisala, who plans to attend Indiana University and major in business, gets more varsity playing time than DeMeo.
He’s proud to wear a Trojans uniform and said he is “very proud” of how the team has done so far this season.
“A lot of people were saying we were going to lose a lot more than we won this year and we proved them wrong,” he said. “I believed in everyone, of course I did. This is a really good team. The seniors lift everyone up. Everyone’s hard-working and there’s good energy around the whole locker room.”
Zairis, the special teams player of the year as a junior, is one of the faster runners on the team and more influential with teammates than most players. As proof of that, consider that he changed the way the players on the kickoff team line up. They used to all be turned toward the kicker. Since the third game of last season, Zairis said, “I changed the rules of kickoff.”
Now, he said, everyone is lined up in a two-point stance, facing the yonder end zone.
“It’s what I used as a wide receiver and it just feels faster,” said Zairis, a sprinter on the track team. “And I think everyone feels faster out of it too.”
Seniors sometimes play in JV games. In one this season, Zairis noticed that his fellow return man had misjudged a kick, was backpedaling and was not going to catch up to the ball, so he raced behind his teammate, caught the football, and took it all the way the other way for a touchdown.
His speed translates to varsity competition as well and he likely will get a significant number of defensive snaps given what a productive passing game Merrillville has.
Zairis said he never had heard that speed of a different sort than he brings to the football field can count against aspiring pilots, of which he is one. Speeding tickets can turn off potential employers of pilots.
“I hadn’t heard that, but that’s fair,” Zairis said. “It’s like a top-notch Uber, so if you’re speeding and driving recklessly, you probably shouldn’t be flying people around.”
Zairis is serving an internship at Porter County Regional Airport in Valparaiso, where he’s learning to fly Cessnas.
On Friday nights, Zairis flies with his feet and faces the ultimate challenge tonight in terms of speed in trying to keep up with Pirates receivers. He, Kisala and Demeo in their own different ways have made Chesterton a better football team.