Natural athlete Peyton Dilbeck flies high and helps Chesterton boys volleyball squad to stay undefeated with 3-0 win over visiting LaPorte on Monday, Boone Grove visits CHS on Wednesday, a 5 p.m. varsity start

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

If a sport has been invented that Chesterton junior Peyton Dilbeck wouldn’t be good at right off the bat, he hasn’t tried it yet.
Basketball was his first love. He was good at that. He joined the cross country team in middle school, “just for conditioning for basketball.” Google his name and that of classmate Ryan Nix, the reigning DAC boys cross country champion, and numerous results will pop up. You’ll see that Dilbeck finished first, second or third. Keep scrolling and you’ll eventually find the late-blooming Nix.
“I was really good at it, but I wanted to play football my whole life,” Dilbeck said. “So after middle school was over, I decided I’m going to play football.”
A running back, he saw a path to playing time for the varsity and well into summer after his sophomore year, he switched to cornerback. It didn’t take him long to ascend to the first team, where he stayed all season. He was one of the five fastest sprinters on the football team.
He started in the backcourt for the freshman basketball team and then the JV, gained a reputation as a rugged defender, rebounded well and scored his share of points as well.
“I liked playing basketball, but I didn’t love it anymore,” he said. “So, I just play for fun now and focus on football and men’s volleyball.”
He decided to give volleyball a try as a sophomore, and now he’s one of two sky-walking outside hitters, flying a little lower than classmate Zane Westerlund, but plenty high.
So, he had the stamina to be the star of the cross country team in middle school, the speed and agility to start as a cornerback for the varsity football team and the excuse-me-while-I-kiss-the-sky leaping ability to momentarily turn volleyball spectators into rock concert audiences.
You think the track coaches might have found a spot for him if he wanted to give that a try? Long jump, high jump, 400 meters, 800 meters, maybe the pole vault.
Instead, he’s having fun playing volleyball. Dilbeck made loud contributions to Monday night’s sweep of LaPorte by scores of 25-19, 25-15, 25-20, and showed a lot of accuracy (57.9 hitting percentage) putting down 11 kills, second only to Westerlund’s 16.
Peyton’s mother, Cathy Dilbeck, has coached the sport for 21 years and is in her first season as head coach of the boys’ varsity. His sister, Reese, is a second-year starter at setter for the volleyball team and a two-year varsity basketball player who led the team in rebounding this past season. His father, David, handles public address duties at the home matches.
At least when it comes to volleyball, Reese seems more like the older sibling. She doesn’t have Peyton’s leaping ability, but has a much deeper understanding of a game that for boys is in its second season as a sport fully sanctioned by the IHSAA.
In Reese, Peyton has a helpful sounding board. He sought her out between sets at Monday night’s win over LaPorte.
Peyton: “What do you see out there?”
Reese: “We’re playing well.. We just have to speed it up a little because they can’t handle our tempo.”
Reese sits on the opposite end of the bench from her mother, but the view must have been the same because that was the first thing Cathy brought up after the match.
“We have to pick up the pace to get some momentum,” she said. “I feel like we were in a rut. It’s just a little bit too slow at times. We’ve got powerhouse people at the net, so we’ve got to be able to speed up our offense a little bit, get them going, and get some consistency too.”
The girls team, for which Cathy Dilbeck is an assistant to her boys assistant, Lindsey Nibert, had
three Division I recruits at the net, Luca Bombacino and Tenley Davis on the outside and Maddie Gilliam, the tallest player at middle blocker. In some ways the boys’ team has a less polished version of that trio with Westerlund and Dilbeck on the outside and 6-foot-9 Randy Deutscher in the middle.
All three boys are former basketball players. In that sport, changing speeds on the dribble can leave defenders in the dust, but in volleyball being uneven with the gas pedal doesn’t cut it. It’s a pedal-to-the-metal sport.
“We have to stay engaged, a little bit more sense of urgency out there and we’ll be fine,” Cathy Dilbeck said.
The Trojans (3-0) are back at home Wednesday night vs. Boone Grove. In a reversal of the normal order of matches, the varsity teams will go first, at 5 p.m., followed by the JV.