Rob Czarniecki and Troy Barrett, Chesterton’s all-state caliber players, take turns leading team to a sweep of Portage as Trojans hold a one-game lead in the DAC race with two games remaining vs. second-place Valparaiso

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

All-state-worthy Chesterton senior baseball players Rob Czarniecki and Troy Barrett continued to execute rare feats for a Trojans baseball team that sits atop the DAC standings with two conference games remaining.
Rare is a player who hits a home run in his team’s first at bat in three consecutive games, but that’s what Czarniecki did, doing so at home vs. Crown Point, Illiana Christian and in the opener of a two-game sweep Portage on Tuesday.
Not many pitchers strike out 15 hitters in six innings, but Barrett did it vs. Portage on Wednesday.
The sweep improved Chesterton’s record to 19-5 overall and 11-1 in the DAC. Valparaiso (18-4, 10-2), next week’s opponent, is alone in second place, one game behind Chesterton and one game ahead of third-place Crown Point.
Details from the Trojans’ sweep of Portage:
Chesterton 10, Portage 3: Portage’s baseball stadium has new turf, but no lights, which forced the final two innings to be delayed a day, the venue shifting to Chesterton.
Left-hander Cam Campbell was equally effective at both locations, totalining 4-⅔ innings of shutout ball in relief of Dylan Bradford. Campbell allowed one hit, walked one and struck out four in picking up his first varsity win.
Chesterton led 8-3 through five innings when the game was suspended because of darkness. Had rain caused the suspension, the game would have been official after five innings.
To extend his streak of homering in his team’s first at bat to three games, Czarniecki planted a 1-2 pitch over the fence in center for his seventh home run of the season.
Czarniecki scored two runs, drove in two, had two hits and was intentionally walked once. The Kentucky recruit is batting .500, has more extra base hits than singles, has a .586 on base percentage, is slugging 1.013, leads the team with 10 stolen bases and is standing out defensively in center field.
Chesterton 7, Portage 2:
Barrett pitched six shutout innings of two-hit ball, walked one and struck out 15 in running his record to 8-0 and his ERA to 0.55.
In 38 innings this season, Barrett has 74 strikeouts and has walked just seven batters. He has limited opposing hitters to a .143 batting average and .186 on base percentage.
“I was getting ahead early in the count with the fastball and if they started to foul off the fastball late in the count I would throw my changeup and sweeper (a hybrid curveball-slider) and they would be way out front and miss,” he said, explaining the high strikeout total.
Playing half his games thus far vs. DAC opponents lends extra credibility to his numbers considering that the past two state champions, Lake Central in 2025 and Valparaiso in ’25 are DAC schools.
“Let’s make it three in a row,” said the Purdue-bound Barrett, who has a 22-2 career record in three seasons of varsity baseball.The offense supported the ace with two runs in the first, one in the second and four in the third.
Czarniecki’s home run streak ended, but he still scored a run in the first. He singled sharply up the middle, stole second, took third on Barrett’s grounder to the right side and scored on Eli McClelland’s triple to the gap in right-center on a ball that rolled all the way to the fence. Caden Hackett drove him home with a groundout to short.
Chesterton turned a single from Ethan Glassman (2 for 4, two runs, an RBI), a Nate Redman hit by pitch and an Isaiah Prater run-scoring single into a second-inning run.
Singles from Hackett, Gary Kirkland and Glassman, coupled with multiple defensive blunders from Portage resulted in Chesterton taking a 7-0 lead, where the score tied until the Trojans’ defense betrayed them in the seventh, enabling the visitors to score two unearned runs off of John Knight.
Chesterton is back home Friday night vs. Highland, in a 5 p.m. battle of Trojans, pitting Chesterton coach John Bogner’s former team against his current one.
Then the focus shifts back to the DAC race, where either a sweep or a split vs. Valpo makes the Trojans the outright champions. Valpo’s only path to the title is via a sweep of Chesterton. The home-and-home series opens Tuesday in Chesterton.