Fresh off 3-1 win over potential sectional opponent Michigan City, Chesterton boys volleyball heads to South Central to play against its Michigan City sectional opening opponent

Tom Keegan
onwardtrojans.com
Only in Westerns and detective TV episodes does the guy does the guy who starts the fight taking shot after shot flush on the chin rally to win and it happens every time. That just doesn’t happen in real life, except sometimes in volleyball, the ultimate momentum sport.
For example, how could Chesterton so dominate visiting Michigan City that it took an 18-3 lead in the first set find itself one point away from going down in the match, 2-1?
City had a 24-22 lead in the third set and Chesterton caught up, 24-24, when Trojans senior middle blocker Bryton Oliver rose up with the biggest play of the night, right after messing up.
Set by freshman Declan Ringler, Oliver soared way above the net and hammered a steep shot onto the floor to get a rise out of the crowd and the Trojans went on to win the set on the way to a 3-1 victory, 25-11, 21-25, 29-27, 25-19.
“It was kind of like redemption because I had a bad pass to set it up, so I saw my opportunity to fix what I kind of messed up,” Oliver said. “I passed it to Declan it was low but he still was able to give me a good set. I was really glad I was able to score the point there. I think the momentum gained from that was huge. It felt really good to force them to call a timeout because of that to let us relax and we controlled the next points.”
When the score is 24-24, the next point is always huge and the team that gets it seems to win the vast majority of the time.
“It was kind of like a statement play, you know what I mean?” Oliver said. “We showed that even though the game’s so close, we’re not scared to still swing as hard as we can. We’re playing to win. We’re not playing to not make mistakes.”
Oliver said he expects the team will learn plenty from its second 3-1 win of the year over Michigan City.
“It’s pretty likely that Michigan city will advance (with a win over LaPorte in the Michigan City sectional) and we’ll play them again,” Oliver said. “So, we have to look at how they won the set that they won and what they were doing to compete so hard with us and take that away.”
Along the same line of thinking, Olivers said he expects tonight’s match at South Central to be a big one because the schools open the postseason against each other, playing a sectional quarterfinal at Michigan City on May 15.
“It’s going to be a big game just to see how good they are, see what their strengths and weaknesses are and also to make sure that we don’t give them any hope in sectionals,” Oliver said. “We want to win 3-0. We want to take the wind out of their sails. That way they don’t have the confidence going into that sectional game.”
Conditions will be distinctly different at tonight’s match than when the schools meet in the Michigan City sectional, Chesterton coach Kevin Labaj said.
“Playing at South Central is going to be tougher because they have a very low ceiling,” Labaj said. “It’s good we finally get to see them.”