Snyder, Chesterton beat expectations

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Chesterton coach John Snyder knows what everybody thought about his Trojans this year. That they were in trouble. That they'd be playing for last place.

That they'd flat-out stink.

"That's what I thought, too," Snyder said.

And why not? Not only did Chesterton lose a ridiculous four Division-I players and its entire offensive and defensive lines, but the Trojans were also scrapping their wide-open, pass-happy spread offense in favor of the option -- with an entire roster of players who had never played the option before, and a senior quarterback who had never played the position before.

So, no, Snyder did not expect the season Chesterton had. The nine victories. The share of the Duneland Conference championship. The pair of dramatic wins over co-champ Valparaiso. Improbable success in the midst of unfathomable tragedy.

"I?had no idea what we would or wouldn't be," Snyder said. "It was just one of those unique years where everything kind of came together. Then we got even closer through adversity, through tragedy. I didn't have any real high expectations, so I understand why everybody thought the way they did about us."

The master stroke was the move to the option -- an offense Snyder helmed as a high school quarterback, then fell in love with as an assistant coach at Valparaiso University alongside Tom Horne and Dan Higgins.

He originally brought the option to Chesterton in the mid-90s, when Bill Dorulla handed him the reins as offensive coordinator. But with a glut of skill players on the perimeter and a supremely talented quarterback in Alex Beierwalter coming up through the system, Snyder switched to its familiar spread offense in 2003.

Eye-popping as the stats were, the Trojans never were able to duplicate their 2000 conference championship -- which was won with the option. So in the offseason, Snyder evaluated his program over the last decade, and decided to go back to what worked in the first place. The option.

Besides having to simplify things for a new line, Snyder wanted to have an offense that could be taught throughout the younger levels, to build continuity throughout the program. And you can't really teach a sixth-grader to chuck 40-yard passes around.

So partly out of necessity, partly out of design, Snyder went back to the option. He put his best athlete -- receiver Aaron Knight -- under center, he taught his inexperienced line the blocking schemes, and the rest is Duneland history.

But the offensive switch is only part of the amazing story at Chesterton this past season. The death of senior linebacker John Thanos' father and grandfather -- who were trying to save a child from drowning in the early September flooding -- was an unthinkable adversity for this group, but it brought them closer together as a team.

And on the field, it wasn't the option offense but a ferocious defense that won the two biggest games of the year -- both at Valparaiso, 12-10 in the regular season immediately following the tragedy and again 10-6 in the sectional opener. Valparaiso averaged 37 points in all its other conference games.

"(Defensive coordinator) Dan McCoy and (defensive backs coach) Nick Bamber did an unbelievable job getting our defense together," Snyder said. "We're one of the few teams to stop, or at least slow down, Valpo twice. That was because of our defense, not our offense."

A defense that was supposed to be just as uninspiring as the offense, it should be pointed out.

So much for prognostications.

"It was just very rewarding," Snyder said. "One of the things about having great players, D-I players, is you tend to have jealousy within the team. Kids are jealous of the recognition they get, and parents are jealous of the recognition other parents' kids are getting. This year, we didn't have that. The kids were genuinely happy for other kids when they excelled. It was fun in that sense.

"It was also fun in that our kids were able to prove everybody wrong. Even last spring, all they heard from outgoing seniors and the community was, 'Oh, you're not going to be very good, you're losing all these guys.' To be able to come back and shut some people up -- and even get some pats on the back from those same people -- that's very rewarding."

Contact Mark Lazerus at 648-3140 or mlazerus@post-trib.com