INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana track and field buffs waited 50 years to see high schoolers like Rylan Hainje and Noah Bontrager. Seventy-two years, in fact.
What’s another 2 hours, 45 minutes spanning two weather delays?
On a weird and wonderful Saturday night at Indiana’s 122nd state meet, Hainje and Bontrager enhanced legacies that were already secure. Both repeated doubles at North Central High School, and both broke state meet records.
There were six meet records in all. Excluding 1980, the first year of metric distances, the six equaled 2025 as the most records since 1976.
“Big way to go out,” said Bontrager, a Westview senior bound for Notre Dame.
Yet it was not how Hainje wanted to go out. After the 300-meter hurdles, he laid on the infield with arm on forehead, receiving medical treatment. He appeared unsteady long afterward, ingesting fluids.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I just remember waking up on the ground.”
So Franklin Central ran the climactic 4×400-meter relay without him.
“We finally had to make a decision,” Flashes coach Josh Pierson said.
With Hainje at the regional, the Flashes broke a 46-year-old state record in the 4×400. If they had won the 4×400, they would have won 40-39 over Bloomington North. Without Hainje, they finished fourth in the relay and fell short, 39-36.
“I’m more hurt that I let my team down,” he said.
Bloomington North has won the past three state indoor championships. But this outdoor title was the first for the city since Bloomington High won the inaugural meet in 1904.
Avon was third with 33 points and Brownsburg fourth with 27, giving the Hoosier Crossroads Conference the 2-3-4 teams.
Hainje and Bontrager are arguably the two top Hoosier runners of the past half-century, dating to Rudy Chapa. Cole Hocker became an Olympic 1,500-meter champion … but he wasn’t running historic times at age 18, as Hainje and Bontrager are.
“It’s crazy to see the history,” Bontrager said. “It’s even crazier I get to break this many records.”
A second weather delay preceded the 1,600 meters, in which Bontrager conceded he “froze a little bit” and was boxed in. He covered the first lap in a slowish 63 seconds. Thereafter, he chased the 4-minute barrier, with Noblesville junior Banner Barnes close behind.
Bontrager ran the last 400 in 58.51 for a time of 4:01.83, breaking his own meet record of 4:02.60. Barnes was second in 4:04.89.
Cross-country state champion Calvin Seitz of Springs Valley set a hot pace in the 3,200, but Bontrager stormed to another meet record, 8:47.27. Previous record was 8:51.15 by four-time winner Futsum Zienasellassie of North Central in 2012.
“Going into that last lap, I was kind of smiling by the 200,” Bontrager said. “Because I was just like, ‘Somehow, I feel good.’ I don’t know if it’s the senior thing, where it’s your last thing in high school and you just give it all you got.”
Hainje gave that.
In the 110-meter hurdles, he clocked 13.16 seconds into a wind of 1.2 meters per second. He broke the meet record he set 51 minutes earlier.
As conditions shifted to crosswind or tailwind, meet officials stopped competition at 5:19 p.m., just before his prelim. When competition resumed 102 minutes later, he won a heat in 13.20, breaking the record of 13.28 he set last year.
Hainje bounced in front of the scoreboard afterward, looking to see whether he broke the national record of 13.08 by Wayne Davis of Raleigh, N.C., in 2009.
In the final, if that -1.2 wind had been +1.2, the time would have equaled 13.04 – well under 13.08. Hainje still ranks No. 3 in prep history.
“It felt like a national record,” he said.
He said he would “definitely” break it at the under-20 USA Championships or Nike nationals at Eugene, Ore., later this month. He has broken state records 14 times in 15 months.
His wooziness was the latest installment in what has been a tumultuous 10 weeks.
Seventy days ago, Hainje worried his season might be over when he felt injured at the Hoosier State Relays. On May 13, he ran a wind-aided 13.09. Days later, his hurdles coach, Melinda George, left Franklin Central’s staff. On May 28, Hainje ran 13.05 at a regional, bettering the national record – but without a wind gauge, the record won’t count.
A GoFundMe account was started to send him to Eugene. That meet selects a team for the U20 World Championships, also at Eugene. There, Hainje would be a medal favorite.
How extraordinary is all this?
Hainje was the first Indiana boy to better a national record in a standard outdoor high school event, albeit unofficially, since 1954. Then, Max Truex of Warsaw ran a 4:20.4 mile, breaking the record held by Louis Zamperini since 1934. (Chapa, of Hammond, set a still-standing national record of 28:32.7 for 10,000 meters in 1976.)
Unexpectedly, Hainje challenged the national record in the 300 hurdles, too.
Out of lane 8, he won by nearly three seconds in 35.26, compared with the 34.72 by Andrew Jones of Spring, Texas. Hainje ran a record of 35.82 at state last year, then lowered that to 35.64 on April 21. He now ranks No. 5 in prep history.
He slowed slightly at the end and raised his right arm after crossing the line. It turned out to be his last race for the Flashes. He next will represent Marian University.
Bloomington North’s championships came after finishes of fourth in 2023, third in 2024, second in 2025.
Bloomington North won an unprecedented fourth straight 4×800 relay in 7:38.87, just off its state record of 7:37.01. Caleb Winders, a member of the relay all four years, anchored in 1:51.81.
Winders, a two-time national champion, later repeated in the 800 in 1:49.36.
What had been a nagging hamstring injury caused him to hobble on his second leg of the 4×400. The Cougars failed to score and had to wait on the race’s outcome.
Bishop Chatard, with Phoenix Boyer anchoring in 46.69, won in 3:15.49.
“We got it done. It was a little scary at the end,” Winders said.
Besides Bontrager’s two meet records and Hainje’s three, the sixth was a 40.60 by Brownsburg in the 4×100 relay.
The meet featured two other doublers and a 7-foot-2 high jump by Warsaw’s Jordan Randall, who missed in a bid for a record 7-4 ¼.
Danville’s Collin Bumgardner, who was sixth in a regional, shockingly won the 100 in 10.58. He emphatically won the 200 in 21.15. only .06 off the meet record.
Churubusco’s Westen Ott, another Notre Dame recruit, won the shot put with a distance of 65-2. He came from behind in the discus to beat defending champion Kaleb Rasheed of Avon by eight inches, 191-10 to 191-2.
Contact David Woods at dwoods1411@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Rylan Hainje, Noah Bontrager headline record-setting IHSAA boys track meet
Reporting by David Woods, For IndyStar / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By David Woods, For IndyStar | USA TODAY Network
