Chesterton girls cross country squad misses qualifying for state meet by the slimmest of margins, losing out on the fifth and final spot to Munster by one point

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com
The New Prairie cross country regional doesn’t post results for the boys and girls races until they are revealed at the awards ceremony well after the races.
At the ceremony in the gymnasium, since only five schools advance to the state meet the fifth-place school erupts at the announcement of the sixth school, which is left to absorb the gutpunch of finishing one spot shy of the goal.
Chesterton girls cross country coach Lindsay Moskalick did her best to calculate the results and thought that her team had just missed the 5th qualifying spot.
Munster claimed the final spot with 191 points, a score calculated by adding the places of each school’s top five finishers. Chesterton totaled 192. One point.
In the event of a tie, the school with the better sixth-place runner advances. Chesterton would have won the tie-breaker, if only it had come to that.
Moskalick didn’t want her runners to have to react in public to the news, so she gathered them outside, right before entering the gymnasium.
That’s where she told them how proud of them she was for training so hard and coming so far.
“One point,” Moskalick said from her seat in the gym. “They all ran really well. The pack ran great.”
The difference: Munster has an elite distance runner, Elora Bliss, whose wheelhouse in track is the 3200 meters. She has a second-place regional finish and a 21st-place at state in the event on her resume. Chesterton doesn’t have a long-distance runner at the level of Bliss. They do have a pack of committed athletes, two seniors, one junior and four sophomores, most of them whose wheelhouse is the 800 meters.
Bliss placed eighth at Saturday’s regional. Chesterton didn’t have any runners place in the top 31, and still the Trojans fell shy by just one point.
In some ways, this year’s team was like a flock of geese, rotating the lead runner almost every week, although unlike geese, not intentionally. Also unlike geese at this time of year, the Trojans’ flock steadily flew north, getting better and better.
In this race, sophomore Paige Clancy was the first to cross the finish line. She placed 32nd. At other times this season, seniors Allison Van Kley and Aubrey Bamber and sophomore Hannah Haring have been the first one on the team to land the team’s highest finish.
Time comparisons validate Moskalick’s point that she had no reason to be disappointed with any of her runners, all of whom ran faster times than on the same course against virtually an identical field on Sep. 9 in New Prairie’s invitational.
Clancy ran a 19:49.2 Saturday, 26 seconds faster than on Sep. 9.
Haring (19:49.9) placed 33rd at the regional, trimming 1:28 on the course since September.
In placing 37th, four-year varsity runner Allison Van Kley (20:01.2) ran her best race ever on the course, knocking off nine seconds from her last trip there and 19 seconds from the 2024 regional. She runs 400 meters and 800 meters at a time in the spring.
Sophomore Natalie Williams’ mind-blowing postseason surge continued. The winner of the DAC JV race, Williams stepped up to the varsity in fantastic fashion, becoming the team’s fourth finisher at the regional, just as she was at the sectional.
Williams, 43rd, came into the race riding a streak of knocking roughly 15 seconds from her personal best at 5,000 meters in three consecutive races. Make it four, but this time she carved 26 seconds off her PR and ran a 20:06.4. Holy … cow!
Bamber played soccer her first three years and added cross country in 2004 to make last year a four-varsity letters rarity. In placing 47th, Bamber was the Trojans’ fifth runner to cross the finish line. She covered the 3.1 miles in 20:12.2, 23 seconds faster than in September and 1:27 faster than at the 2024 regional.
A sophomore running cross country for the first time, White ran a 20:33.5, an improvement of 1:15 from her September race on the same course.
Junior Natascha Lepinasse ran a 20:42, her best time on the course.
“We all ran really well,” Clancy said during the long waiting period before learning which teams would advance to state. “I really hope we make it. We’ve worked so hard. We all push each other, and it helps a lot being in a group.”
The Trojans didn’t make it by the smallest of margins, but in the process earned a great deal of respect and showed why anyone paying attention is bullish on their chances of making it to Terre Haute for the state meet in 2026.
None of the Trojans placed high enough to advance to the state meet without the team.

2025 New Prairie regional results:
Team: 1. Lake Central 60, 2. Penn 61, 3. Valparaiso 171, 4. Morgan Township 174, 5. Munster 191, 6. Chesterton 192, 7. Kankakee Valley 243, 8. Goshen 253, 9. Portage 272, 10. Fairfield 273, 11. Crown Point 328, 12. Illiana Christian 328, 13. South Bend St. Joseph 333, 14. Wawasee 362, 15. Hanover Central 377, 16. Northridge 415, 17. South Bend Adams 415, 18. New Prairie 421, 19. NorthWood 434, 20. Hobart 454, 21. South Bend Riley 550, 22. Tri-County 639, 23. West Central 728, 24. Rensselaer Central 762.
Individual winner: Macey Thompson (LC): 17:25.6.