Trojans lose big leads in second and fourth sets and lose boys volleyball home match to first-place Lake Central, 3-1

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Remember the night that Chesterton lost realistic hopes of winning a DAC championship in boys volleyball’s first year as an IHSAA sanctioned sport as opposite night.
The Trojans responded so much better to failure than it handled prosperity on a night that ended with Lake Central winning, 3-1, and heading back to St. John with its undefeated conference record in tact.
The record shows that LC defeated Chesterton 25-19, 25-23, 12-25, 26-24, but those numbers don’t reveal the wild turns the match took in front of Chesterton’s biggest boys volleyball crowd.
When the circumstances were fertile for them to fade away, their confidence at risk of being destroyed, the Trojans were at their best and most aggressive. When the scoreboard said they should be riding self esteem to victory, they lost big leads.
After a night like that included watching his team lose the second set after leading 18-11 and the fourth set after building a 19-14 lead, what message does a coach frame in the locker room as the players lick their wounds? Does he choose words that hug them or words that slug them?
“I told them I was proud of them,” Chesterton coach Kevin Labaj said. “They played a really tough game. Just a few mental mistakes and whatnot, but other than that, they played tough. It was a great, great volleyball game.”
Lake Central (13-4 overall, 8-0 in the DAC) will be tough to topple from its perch atop the conference now that a second win over the second-place Trojans (14-2 overall, 7-2 in the DAC) is in the books. Chesterton opened the season with a victory over LC in a best-of-three-sets format tournament that doesn’t count in the DAC standings.
There were times where it felt as though the Trojans were on the path to what would have been a dramatic comeback victory, but in the end they performed like a baseball team with everything but a closer, a skilled boxer armed with the whole package except a knockout punch.
LC won the first set 25-19 and the hosts bounced back from the disappointment of that by taking charge in the second set. LC emerged from a timeout trailing 18-11 and relentlessly tore away at the lead, ultimately taking the set, 25-23.
Now LC was up 2-0 and from the bleachers it was difficult not to think that this was Chesterton’s chance and it just went down the drain and now the visitors would shut the door in a hurry and talk about their sweep on the ride home.
It didn’t happen that way.
“One thing I think we do really well is we don’t get down,” Labaj said. “We keep our heads up and we keep pushing and whether we’re down or we lose a game the second set being up so much, we came out that third set like nothing happened and in that set we didn’t let off the gas.”
Perhaps angry with what they allowed to happen in the second set, the Trojans took it out on their opponents and went up 9-0 in the third set and kept the hammer down until the scoreboard showed a 25-12 win.
They carried the momentum from that into the fourth set, determined to catch up and force a fifth.
They went up 19-14, and then when LC inched back into it, senior Jack Rodriguez put down a kill that spanked the floor, gave the crowd a thrill and put the Trojans up, 21-18.
Then Lake Central finished the set the way Kenedi Bradley does a race when she has a baton in her hand and a lot of ground to make up. Lake Central 26, Chesterton 24.
Just as the second set had, the final one ended on an unforced error of Chesterton’s.
Might the pressure have gotten the best of the Trojans?
“I don’t think it was pressure,” Labaj said. “It was just little things that we normally don’t make mistakes on that we did today, especially serve receive. We’re usually a lot better on serve receive than we were today, and so we just have to get back to the grindstone, fix it.”
Based on how well the Trojans psychologically repaired themselves on the fly after losing leads, it stands to reason they will be able to put the frustrating nature of this loss out of their minds as they resume their schedule Thursday at Valparaiso
“I definitely think so,” Labaj said. “They’ll be fine going into Valpo on Thursday, and Valpo’s a tough school to play at too, so we’ll come in, forget the past, and focus on the future.”