Chesterton junior Louis Raffin trying to run and jump his way into the state meet before working in the summer on becoming a two-way football player

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

On the quiet side, Chesterton junior Louis Raffin never has had any problem with fading into the background and quietly and steadily improving.
He always has been fast in the 400 meters and on the football field, but Aaron Resto was always faster in track and there always were more experienced receivers and/or healthier ones.
Now his footsteps are too loud, his feet too fast, to be ignored. Raffin has caught up to the spotlight now and as long as he stays healthy, there will be no changing that. And he’ll be fine with that too. He’s not one to waste energy on things you can’t change.
The last two open 400-meter races Raffin has run, he not only finished with a sub-50 time he finished ahead of Resto.
Raffin is right there with Nathan Vaughan, Kieran Barnewall, Cal Wisniewski and Owen Edlen in terms of the value he brings to the Chesterton track and field team. Raffin proved that in helping Chesterton win its first DAC championship since 2010. And he has a chance to show it again Thursday at the Portage sectional, a meet scheduled to get underway at 5 p.m.
And if there is a better college football prospect in the Chesterton Class of 2026, name him.
At least 6-foot-2, Raffin has the size, speed, loose hips and intelligence to project well as both a college receiver and safety. Limited to three games last season because of a broken collarbone suffered in the days leading up to the season-opener, Raffn played just three games as a junior, all on offense. His presence created more space for every other skill player on the field with him.
Raffin wants to play college football and explained what
“A lot of coaches have been coming through the school and talking, they’ll go to different schools throughout the region to talk to kids,” he said. “I’ve been talking to a lot of coaches and I’m looking to go to some camps this summer. I’m trying to gage where I’m at and it’s kind of hard to tell because I only had a three-game season.”
Based on what he has learned from interacting with college coaches so far, Raffin has advice for others who want to play college football: Get good grades. He has them, in keeping with family tradition.
“I’ve been telling people that makes a big difference when it comes to recruiting,” he said. “That’s one of the first things they’ll say, especially when it’s less than D1 where they can’t give you full scholarship money. It makes it easy for them to say ‘OK, we can give you an academic scholarship.’ It makes you more recruitable.”
Even coming off a three-game football season, Ivy League schools and other strong academic institutions such as Hillsdale College, an NCAA Division II school in Michigan, know enough about him to believe he would be a good fit. That list of schools could expand, based on how well he performs at summer camps.
“My main focus right now is track, and then my main focus is to have a good summer,” he said.
Raffin has attended spring football practices but has stayed on the sidelines so as not to risk injury. He said he will try to play both ways his senior season.
“I’m going to every practice, watching it, and since it’s starting with the basics, I’m not paying attention to receiver for now and just focusing on DB,” he said. “They’re starting simple, so I want to get the basics down before I even take a rep on the field. Once track is done, I’m going to try to rep it out more this summer.”
The way Raffin and teammates are doing in the 4x400 relay, plus with his progress in the open 400 and the long jump, there is a good chance football will remain on the back burner for him until after the June 6 state track and field meet at North Central High in Indianapolis.
The top three finishers in each event at the Valparaiso regional May 29 qualify for the state meet. The Chesterton 4x400 squad of Resto, Cal Wisniewski, Barnewall and Raffin ranks second in the region with a time of 3:22.21, which is better than the best of Merrillville (3:24.58), Munster (3:26.24) and Hobart (3:26.47). Those times won’t matter once the regional times are in the record, but they do make a positive forecast for Chesterton.
Raffin ranks third in the long jump at 22-3, a couple of inches behind Vaughan, who is at No. 2.
To have a chance at those three paths to the state meet, Raffin must do well enough at the sectional to advance to the regional.
Multi-tasking can be especially taxing for an athlete who has to count a 400-meter run among his events, much more so a pair of them.
At the DAC meet, Raffin was at sixth place through the preliminary round of the long jump. He hustled from there to the track to run in the open 400 meters and finished third there with a 49.74. Coach Bryan Nallenweg advised him to scratch his first two rounds of the long jump finals if his mark held sixth place, which it did. That left him with one more jump.
“Then my last jump I was getting ready to go, doing my lifts and I started cramping in my left leg,” he said. “I turned to Nate and I was like, ‘Holy (cow!), I just started cramping.’ And then I was like ‘Well, might as well just go full go, everything I’ve got.’ And then I PRed. It was crazy.”
The effect the 400 has on the body, never pleasant, can be unpredictable.
“I don’t even know how to describe it,” Raffin said. “To be honest, I kind of felt like I was about to throw up after this one and my legs were dying, which is why I was so shocked I did that long jump, but I’m glad I did.”
Raffin didn’t ignore the warning his body was sending him.
“After that I was just stretching like crazy because the last thing I wanted was to cramp in the 4x4,” he said.
He didn’t and ran a 49.4 split.
Running in the 49s in the open 400 on consecutive weeks was big for the junior.
“Sub-50 is the barrier every 400 runner goes for,” Raffin said. “So, when I got that last week, I was so happy. You have to move on quickly. Now it’s an expectation. Expectations are higher now.”
He wouldn’t have it any other way. It makes it even more gratifying for him when he meets and exceeds them. He already has done a lot for Chesterton athletics and all signs indicate the biggest contributions are on the horizon for the athlete armed with ample humility, always a key ingredient in staying on a rapid improvement curve.