CHS boys volleyball puts 6-0 record on the line Thursday at Crown Point after sweeping LaPorte at home Wednesday

Tom Keegan
onwardtrojans.com

The last time Chesterton senior George O’Connor competed at Crown Point, he scored the winning soccer goal, a tie-breaking penalty kick in the 37th minute of the first half of a match the Trojans would go on to win, 4-1, to keep the Trojans undefeated in DAC play.
O’Connor returns with a different set of teammates to play indoors. He won’t be trying to kick a ball into a net, or in his primary role as a soccer defender, preventing opponents from doing the same. Instead, he’ll be trying to score points by sending shots over the net and onto the floor.
Again, O’Connor will be trying to help keep his team undefeated, but not just in the DAC, undefeated in the history of the volleyball program.
This being the first year of boys volleyball as an IHSAA-sanctioned sport, the one thing Chesterton still hasn’t done is lose. The Trojans put their 6-0 record on the line Thursday with the varsity match set to start at about 6 p.m.
“Of course it means something” O’Connor said of the undefeated record “because this is our first year being a real sport, so we’re proud of that, but we keep a level head and make sure we go into every game humble and still with a chip on our shoulder, with it being we’re just now a sport and we have something to prove.”
As a tune-up for a tougher opponent, Chesterton swept LaPorte on Wednesday night, just as Crown Point had done to the Slicers the previous week.
For anyone fearing that an undefeated record might make for fertile ground for overconfidence or complacency, the schedule is doing the Trojans a favor because the two-word combination, Crown Point, tends to be an effective antidote for overconfidence. The Bulldgos have an aggressive athletic department and field strong teams in pretty much all sports.
“It’s always tough going into Crown Point for a match,” Chesterton coach Kevin Labaj said. “They’re very scrappy.”
Chesterton opened the season with a pair of best-of-three matches in the Lake Central Invitational. But this is the first best-of-five road match of the season and that only adds to the appeal of it for O’Connor.
“I like playing at other schools,” he said. “I feel like the energy’s higher sometimes against you. I like playing with the pressure. I like that. You see them get discouraged. You see the whole stadium get discouraged. That’s something I like. I like seeing them get down.”
He did that to the soccer crowd at Crown Point in the fall. And he’ll try to do the same to the indoor audience. So, there are some similarities between soccer and volleyball, but not many.
“This game is very mental. It’s very different from soccer,” O’Connor said. “In soccer, you can make a mistake, nothing might happen. Your teammates can cover for you. But if you make a mistake here, you shank a ball, that’s a point for the other team. It’s a game of mistakes. It’s a frustrating thing, but you just have to be mentally strong about that. Other athletes that joined who didn’t play volleyball, we try to bring each other up and help each other with that in those moments.”
O’Connor played intramural volleyball in fifth and sixth grades at Westchester Intermediate but didn’t play again until his junior season. After a long hiatus, Chesterton brought back club volleyball in O’Connor’s sophomore season, but he still was in year-round soccer mode then and played club soccer during the spring.
“But then I thought I have to have more fun in high school and play two sports, rather than stress over one sport,” he said.
O’Connor credited coaches who saw potential in him, managers from the girls volleyball team, and more experienced teammates with helping him to progress steadily as a junior. Now he’s considering making volleyball his second sport in college as well if whichever school he selects encourages that. He plans to visit a school in Indiana (Marian University), Illinois (Benedictine College) and Wisconsin (Wisconsin Lutheran).
His height, “maybe 6-3 with shoes on,” he said, leaping ability, and agility made him a strong prospect. He had his vertical leap measured at a personal best 31.5 inches Tuesday, and he’s quick to send credit the way of strength and conditioning coach Matt Wagner for that.
Senior Jack Rodriguez, as experienced a volleyball player as the team has, has been a help to O’Connor in teaching him the game and has been impressed with his aptitude.
“He’s really picked it up,” Rodriguez said. “He’s a great outside (hitter). He can pass. He can hit. He’s really athletic. And he’s a great teammate.”