Chesterton standout sprinter and long jumper Nathan Vaughan does some of his best and most enjoyable work standing still in frigid air

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Ask yourself how much money someone would need to pay you to stand in sub-freezing temperatures for a dozen hours or so with live maggots in your pocket.
OK, now subtract that figure from itself and that’s how much someone would need to entice Chesterton High junior track and field standout Nathan Vaughan to do it. In fact, he’s happy to do it any chance he can.
While most in Chesterton bemoaned the cold, cold winter that officially ended last Sunday, Vaughan loved it. The warmer weather of the previous winter was a source of frustration for him.
Vaughan is not a masochist; he just loves to go ice fishing, and the colder weather is one of the reasons he is so happy the family moved north from Indianapolis seven years ago.
“We didn’t get ice last year,” Vaughan said. “We got a lot of ice this year. I bet I went almost every day for about a month.”
It can be difficult for someone who doesn’t share his passion to understand, and it’s not all that easy for him to explain just what it is about the hobby that keeps him coming back for more.
“I don’t know,” Vaughan said. “I just love it. It’s just something about being outside. I don’t know. I really don’t know why I like it. It’s the thrill. It’s like the fear of missing out. You don’t want to go home because five minutes later you might catch something. So that just keeps me out until I can’t stand around anymore.”
Vaughan said he has stood in the cold for as long as 16 hours, and it’s not unusual to stay out there in pursuit of the big catch for more than 10 hours at a time.
The company he keeps, other than the maggots he stores in a can in his pocket “to keep them warm,” has a lot to do with the appeal of ice fishing. Every time he braves the cold, fishing pole in hand, Vaughan and his favorite fishing partner, his father, Mike, create memories they will cherish forever.
Sometimes that means bringing home a big haul of fish to clean and store in the freezer. Other times it means Skunk City.
“I’ve done it way more times than I want to admit,” he said of spending all day in the cold without anything to show for it.
Those not hooked by fishing wonder what fishermen must think about while they are spending all that time dangling flexible 2-foot fishing rods in the water.
“Catching fish,” Vaughan said. “I just want to catch fish. That’s all I think about when I’m out there.”
As for the live maggots, purchased at Slez’s Bait and Tackle in Lake Station, he said, “It doesn’t seem nearly as gross as when you see them on the garbage can in the summertime. It doesn’t seem nearly as gross as that. It’s, fishing bait, so it’s not gross.”
Bluegills are the most common fish he catches, plus some walleye and “a pike every once in a while.” He said he once took home 300 bluegills.
He takes them home and cleans them, which he said takes about a minute per fish.
“I have a bunch in the freezer,” he said. “I bet I have probably 10 gallons of filets in the freezer. “
They are healthy to eat, he said, if you don’t overdo it because there are traces of mercury in them. He doesn’t do it for the free food, though, armed with the knowledge that nothing in life is free.
“You say that it’s free and you spend $300 on an auger and $100 on a fish rod and $300 on a fish finder,” he said, and by “you” he meant his father. “It’s free, but you have to pay for everything for it to be free.”
The auger that the Vaughans use cuts a hole in the ice that is 6 inches in diameter.
When he’s not standing still in the cold, Vaughan is burning down the track, sometimes over hurdles but usually not, or the long jump runway piling up points for his high school.
He ran a 6.96 in the 60 meters, tied for 11th best in the state so far, on March 22 at the Portage Last Chance Qualifier meet. He will be running in that event and two relays at the Hoosier State Relays on Saturday at the Indiana Farm Bureau Fall Creek Pavilion in Indianapolis. It’s considered the biggest high school indoor track meet in Indiana, which does not have an IHSAA-sanctioned state indoor meet. It starts at 7:30 a.m. Central.
Vaughan has such a wide array of skills that finding the right four events for him in each meet in the spring amounts to a fascinating challenge for head track and field coach Bryan Nallenweg. The coach and the athlete had a recent conversation about how he might be used this spring. Vaughan came out of it with a pretty good idea of what to expect at most meets.
“Definitely long jump, definitely the 200, and definitely the 4x400, so it’s between the (110 high) hurdles and the 100 at every meet,” he said. “He’s hoping Cal Wisniewski will be better than me in hurdles, so that I can do the 100 because I’m faster than Cal in the 100 and he’s been better than me in the hurdles so far.”
The 300 hurdles race isn’t an option, Vaughan said, because it’s too close to the 200 meters, thus far his best running event.
Vaughan is far from the only Chesterton athlete who posted good numbers indoors this season. DirectAthletics.com tracks the state’s best times.
Junior Kenedi Bradley’s 7.61 in the 60 meters is tied with Portage’s Tiara Gray for the second fastest time run by a girl, behind only Nadia Ford (7.55) of Fort Wayne Carroll.
Senior Kieran Barnewall ranks second in the 60 hurdles with a 7.85, behind only Rylan Hainje (7.76) of Franklin Central.
Senior AJ Brandon, a second-year high jumper, ranks tied for fourth in the state at 6-foot-8, and senior Nolan Johnston, a first-year jumper, is tied for 11th at 6-4. Warsaw’s Randall Jordan is at the top with a 7-0.25.
Senior Joe Sandrick is tied for 10th at 14-0 in the pole vault.
Louis Raffin, Wisniewski, Vaughan and Aaron Resto ran a 3:26.53 4x400 relay, 11th in the state. Wisniewski, Resto, Barnewall and Vaughan ran a 1:31.38 in the 4x200 relay, 14th in the state.
No official data is tracked on bluegills caught in subzero temperatures, but it’s doubtful anyone at the Hoosier State Relays can hang with Vaughan in that category.