Quality depth lands Chesterton girls cross country team a third-place finish at the DAC championship meet at Kesling Park in LaPorte, where Lake Central dominated

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

On a day when Lake Central showed why it is in a class by itself in the DAC in girls cross country, Chesterton showed the value of depth.
The top three runners in the DAC championship at Kesling Park in LaPorte on Saturday all wore Lake Central singlets. Running two juniors, four sophomores and a freshman, LC won the meet with 22 points, way ahead of second-place Valparaiso (58 points) and third-place Chesterton (100).
Junior Macey Thompson (17:30.8), fourth at the state meet last fall, ran alone for most of the race, finishing way ahead of teammates Chole Neal (18:24.7) and Lana Bruggeman (18:42.5).
Chesterton didn’t have anyone capable of running in that stratosphere and all five scoring runners for LC finished before the Trojans had one girl cross the finish line. Not only that, five schools had at least one runner finish before Chesterton senior Aubrey Bamber placed 15th, covering the flat 5,000 meters in 19:58.7, one place ahead of sophomore teammate Hannah Haring (19:59.9).
Depth enabled Chesterton to finish as high as it did, and of the eight conference schools, the Trojans had the smallest gap between its first finisher and seventh, a mere 59.6 seconds. The next-smallest gap: Valparaiso at 1:55.
Why is that relevant if only the top five finishers from each school count toward the score? Well, for one thing, that’s not always true and Saturday was one of those times. Chesterton and Portage both scored 100 points, and the rules stipulate that the tiebreaker is comparing each school’s sixth finisher. Chesterton senior Lauren Kroft finished 28th in 20:46.5. Portage senior Brooklyn Reed finished 39th in 22:58.9, so Chesterton finished third and Portage fourth. The rest of the field: Crown Point (106), Merrillville (157), LaPorte (191), Michigan City (224).
But even when a tiebreaker isn’t needed, ideally a team’s sixth and seventh runners have an impact by staying in touch with the rest of the team, and the seventh runner pushes the sixth, who pushes the fifth, all the way up the line.
Chesterton’s seventh runner, sophomore Natalie White, finished 31st in 20:58.3, which was higher than any other school’s No. 7 finisher, even Lake Central’s (Naia Nikitaras, 32nd in 21:08.4).
Clancy was Chesterton’s third finisher at 22nd, running a 20:24.4, followed by Allison Van Kley, 23rd (20:33.2). Junior Natascha Lepinasse (20:36.8) finished 24th, the most recent strong effort in her breakout season.
Another sign of Chesterton’s depth: Four different runners have been the team’s top runner in a meet at least once. This was Bamber’s second time. Van Kley, Haring and Clancy also have been first on the team at least once.
The DAC championship has no connection to the remaining meets, of which Chesterton hopes there will be three. For that to happen, the Trojans must finish in the top five at the sectional they host at Sunset Hill Farm on Oct. 18 to qualify for the regional at New Prairie on Oct. 25, where a top-five finish would send the team to state.
Chesterton has a strong chance of contending for the sectional title and should not have a problem snagging one of the top five spots required to advance to the regional, where the competition grows much tougher.
The New Prairie Invitational, which was run Sep. 20, has a similar field to the regional. Chesterton finished sixth, five points behind fifth-place Morgan Township.
It was a good day for the Trojans but qualifying for state will require an even better day than that and a better day than they had at the DAC meet.
“I don’t think we did as well as we wanted to as a team,” Bamber said of the race at Kesling Park. “We want to try to do well at sectionals and regionals because we have a good shot at getting fifth at the regional.”
Haring, who ran in the 4x800 relay as a freshman at state, knows how enjoyable an atmosphere it is when the best runners in the state are in one place, and she wants to experience that again in cross country in Terre Haute.
Haring understands what it will take for the Trojans to qualify for the state meet for the first time since they finished third in 2021, behind only Columbus North and Carmel.
“I think for sure we have a good chance,” Haring said. “We just all have to be at our best that day to get there. It’s going to take every single one of us.”