Chesterton 1990 graduate Toby Gentry’s eye for photography and the leaping ability of Trojans junior volleyball player Luca Bombacino combine to make a photo so eye-popping it looks fake

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com
A steel worker for Cleveland Cliffs by profession, amateur photographer Toby Gentry, who shoots photos at Chesterton High School sporting events to give back to his alma mater, clicked this masterpiece at the Trojans’ home volleyball match vs. Merrillville, Sep. 16.
Gentry, a 1990 CHS graduate, used his sharp eye at the plate for the Trojans’ baseball team. As a senior, he set the single season batting average record of .521, which still stands.
In college, his sharp eye led to him setting a school record for single game 3-pointers (seven) for Purdue North Central, now Purdue Northwest, a record that since has been broken.
Photographs are subjective, so no records are kept. Otherwise, he might have a difficult time breaking his record for coolest photo taken at a Chesterton sporting event.
The photo, best viewed on the home page of Onwardtrojans.com
“I was sitting down in front of the scorer’s table,” said Gentry, whose wife Tracie, works at the table during home volleyball matches. “I asked the official if it was OK if I sat there first.”
Gentry said he was using the 25-millimeter to 100-milimeter lens that came as part of the body of his Canon R6 camera, zoomed out, and was shooting at a thousandth of a second.
Since the action is so fast, photographers don’t know when they’ve captured a moment just right until reviewing the pictures later.
“I get home and I look at them all on TV and I delete the bad ones,” Gentry said.
It was the first time he chose that vantage point and from there, he said, “It’s a matter of seeing it, hitting the button halfway to focus, and then hammering it because it’s on burst. I think it’s six frames a second I can take with that lens.”
A junior, Bombacino committed to play volleyball on scholarship at the University of Michigan and has two Division I-bound teammates. Senior Tenley Davis has a full ride to Loyola University of Chicago and junior Maddie Gilliam committed to Butler University.
When shown Gentry’s photo for the first time, Gilliam said, “Oh, that’s awesome! That’s crazy. That can’t be real.”
No, she was informed, it’s real.
“That’s insane,” she said. “Oh, my word! That’s crazy!”
Gentry also is an assistant to varsity baseball coach John Bogner and has coached other sports at Chesterton.