Boyd-Raffin connection and big-play defense lead Chesterton to 27-6 win over Lake Central as Trojans move to 5-2 overall and 4-1 in the DAC

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Raise your hand if after Hobart blasted Chesterton in the opening week of the 2025 football season you expected the Trojans to rebound from that by winning four of the next five games.
Again, a show of hands, please. Anybody? Of course not. Nobody outside the tight circle inside the locker room could have envisioned that.
Yet, after using its big-play defense and the most diversified offensive attack to date Friday night in a 27-6 victory over visiting Lake Central, Chesterton heads into the final two weeks of the regular season with a 5-2 overall record and a 4-1 DAC mark.
In the second half, both teams continued the tendencies that have played such a huge part in their records, LC’s being the reverse of Chesterton’s at 2-5, 1-4. Chesterton forces turnovers and LC commits them. The Trojans went the whole game without one and Lake Central had three in the second half.
Chesterton has been +8 in turnover margin with 14 forced and six committed. LC (2-5, 1-4) doesn’t make statistics public, but if its margin is the reverse of Chesterton’s as is their record, that would seem about right.
Just as forecasting a 5-2, 4-1 record would have been farfetched after the season-opening 20-3 loss to Hobart, would you believe that linebacker Lucas Anderson scored his third defensive touchdown of the season and second by way of a fumble recovery, this one covering 94 yards? Believe it.
“Did I look fast?” Anderson asked. “Everybody said I almost got caught but almost doesn’t count.”
No, it doesn’t.
A third-year starter, Anderson almost had an interception as a sophomore, but he dropped the ball. This season, he hasn’t dropped anything but jaws. He had an interception three weeks in a row and returned one of them for a touchdown.
He was far from alone in delivering big defensive play in a game that was tight until the Trojans sprinted away from LC with a 17-0 fourth quarter. They led 7-0 at the half and 10-6 after three quarters.
Lake Central fumbled away the ball twice when inside the 5 and threatening to score.
On the other side of the ball, sophomore quarterback Boyd and receiver Louis Raffin connected on seven completions covering 169 yards, including a 65-yard touchdown. They might have connected on three touchdowns but for Raffin letting what he called a “perfect throw,” slip out of his hands and Boyd overthrowing Raffin by a good bit after he had burned past the defense.
Raffin scored the game’s first touchdown, covering most of the 65 yards after the catch, scoring with 2:36 left in the first quarter. Mace Redman’s extra point made it 7-0.
“As soon as he busted outside the edge, I knew no one was going to catch him,” Chesterton coach Mark Peterson said.
The visitors scored their only points on a double pass that worked to perfection. Sophomore quarterback Wes Lalich, who split time at quarterback with Cameron Reddick, threw a backwards pass to Jayden Mansfield, who threw to a wide-open Frankie Verta. He had nobody close enough to challenge him and scored on the 76-yard play. The extra point kick failed and Chesterton expanded its lead to 10-6 when Redman booted his first of two field goals, this one 29 yards with 5:17 left in the third quarter.
Lake Central threatened to take its first lead on the ensuing drive but fumbled in the end zone and senior defensive tackle Colin Kellogg fell on the ball, one of many big plays for him on the night.
“Wonderful play by Alex Zairis,” Kellogg said. “He hit him and his shoulder went right to the ball. That was a great hit by him. That was a game-changing play because if they would have scord there they would have went up.”
As for his role in the play, Kellogg said, “I got double-teamed, hustled off and just fell on the ball.”
The offense responded by driving 72 yards to the 8 but then committed a 5-yard penalty and Boyd was sacked for a 6-yard loss and the Trojans settled for Redman’s 36-yard field goal, pushing the lead to 13-6 with 11:01 left in the game.
The lead grew to 20-6 when Gus Wisch’s 23-yard run on a sweep set up Andrew Goveia’s 2-yard touchdown run with 3:07 left.
The Trojans had more big defensive plays left in them.
LC was deep in Trojans territory when Reddick unleashed a pass to an open receiver. Charging junior linebacker Zane Westerlund, what a night he had, what a season, threw his hand up and deflected the pass.
“Zane’s een doing a great job all season and really brought it again tonight,” Peterson said. “That knockdown on that third-down play was enormous. That kid was open and if Zane doesn’t knock it down, he’s probably sneaking into the end zone.”
Instead, the last one to find the end zone was Anderson, and Westerlund had a hand in that play too, stripping the ballcarrier so that his fellow linebacker could scoop and score again.
Chesterton’s senior linebacker is the only Lucas Anderson on whitepages.com whose initials are TD.
“As Lucas is running down the field, Wally (McCormack, quarterbacks coach) kept saying, ‘He’s got to be DAC player of the year,’” Peterson said.
Offensive or defensive? He leads the team in tackles and turnovers forced and has three touchdowns so it’s a legitimate question, even though he hasn’t taken a snap with theoffense.
“It’s crazy,” fellow hard-hitting linebacker Roberto Stabolito said of Anderson. “He’s having a year. He’s having a year.”
Westerlund on Anderson: “It’s crazy. Some of it is happenstance, but Lucas is a dog. Big plays are going to happen just because he is who he is. He’s a dog.”
LC’s final possession ended with Chesterton sophomore Mauro Semidei intercepting a pass.
Chesterton’s offensive success on the night might future opponents pause about planning to load up strictly against Goveia, who rushed for 81 yards on 22 carries Friday.
Boyd completed 17 of 24 passes for 234 yards and a touchdown. He has thrown nine touchdown passes and been intercepted once on the season.
Boyd distributed the ball to five different receivers, including tight Mike Rone five times and slot receiver Wisch thrice.
“I think it helps a lot to show that we can win in different ways,” Raffin said. “We couldn’t get things really going in our run game, so we needed to rely more on the pass game, and we were able to win doing that. It shows how complete our offense is as opposed to maybe some past years. I feel like we can win with the run, and we can win with the pass.”
And a defense that makes big plays, many of them turnovers.
Kellogg, whose third sack of the season was among his many contributions Friday, said he isn’t shocked at what this team has done with remaining games left vs. Crown Point and Merrillville.
Why not?
“The work we put in throughout the offseason,” Kellogg said. “You’d see the same guys there every day. Our class and we have a lot of contributing juniors and sophomores. I feel like as we went through those workouts, our team got closer together. Coach talks about that all the time, how throughout wins and losses and workouts in the summer we drew closer together and that really helped us. I started to know this was possible see us work in the summer.”