2025 Chesterton Athletics Hall of Fame: John "Jay" Mathias, Class of 1966

2025 Chesterton Athletics Hall of Fame: John “Jay” Mathias, Class of 1966
Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

More than a half-century ago, long before the transfer portal dominated the news in college sports, a boy transferred from Rensselaer High School to Chesterton when his father changed jobs. And two years later, in the fall of 1965, The Trojans had themselves a Calumet Conference championship in football and a Parade All-American quarterback in John “Jay” Mathias.
It was until he was done competing in football, basketball and track that his father, John Mathias, become athletic director at Chesterton from 1967 to 1980. Before taking that post, John already had influenced Chesterton athletics for the better by passing along his tricks to the trade of playing quarterback. The focal point of a 1953 Ball State University football season preview found online from a Muncie newspaper identified the team’s biggest iss as to where they would turn for a passer now that the “trigger-armed” QB Mathias had graduated.
Clearly, the son inherited the father’s athletic genes and was an attentive pupil to the former football coach’s teachings.
Jay Mathias, who was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame in 2015 and died in 2018, will be inducted into the 2025 Chesterton Athletics Hall of Fame this Saturday, Aug. 30 at a dinner at Sand Creek Country Club. Call CHS Athletics at 219-983-3730 for ticket information.
“That’s where the quarterbacking started, with my dad,” Jay’s younger brother, Bruce, said. “My dad taught him the same kinds of things he did.”
Bruce said his brother was “a good quarterback, really good. He was, what, 175 pounds and quick, quick within that 50, 100 yards, and he could fake. I went to all his Chesterton games. He played safety too.”
Jay played basketball, ran the hurdles and competed in the high jump for the Trojans.
“He made it down state in the high jump,” Bruce said. “I don’t remember what place he finished. He did the old Western Roll.”
It wasn’t until Dick Fosbury shined a light on the arched-back technique by winning gold at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968 that what became known as the Fosbury Flop became the preferred technique.
Mathias was strictly a football player by then.
Quarterback was the position on which he was listed on the Parade All-American team and that’s what Indiana University recruited him to play, but Harry Gonzo had the quarterback spot locked up, so Jay became a safety in college. Freshmen were not eligible to play varsity ball in 1966, so he was limited to earning three varsity letters and earn them he did. As a junior, he was the team’s second-leading tackler. He had eight interceptions in his two years as a starter, and as a senior set a since-broken single-season school record for interceptions (five).
Even before that, he already had taken part in a huge moment in Hoosiers football history.
IU has played in one Rose Bowl, on Jan. 1, 1968, the last game of Mathias’ sophomore season. The final score: USC 14, Indiana 3.
The MVP of the game: OJ Simpson, more than a quarter century before the Trial of the Century. Simpson carried the football 25 times, gained 128 yards and rushed for the game’s only two touchdowns. USC was voted national champions in the Associated Press and coaches’ polls.
Bruce remembers his father advancing the theory that USC being accustomed to the bright lights of all that went with promoting and playing in the Rose Bowl, aka “the granddaddy of them all,” gave the Trojans from Southern California the advantage.
No way of knowing what, if any, impact that intangible had on the outcome, but Jay didn’t mention it in an interview with late Post-Tribune sportswriter John Mutka 10 years ago on the weekend Mathias was inducted into the Indiana Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
“It was like men vs. boys,” Mathias told Mutka. “Seventeen of their 22 players were drafted to play pro ball. They outweighed us by over 20 pounds across (the line).”
Jay played his first two years of high school football at Rensselaer, where his father had been the coach but stepped down because he did not want to coach his son.
“I played every game twice because my dad would quiz me about my performance when I came home,” Mathias told Mutka.
As well as the son ran, passed, tackled and led in his two seasons as a football player for the Trojans, he must have done quite well at learning to turn any red marks on those quizzes into successful plays.