Indiana

Caitlin Clark, Indiana Fever Hit Huge Achievement Without Even Playing Game

Published

2 years ago

September 4, 2024

Caitlin Clark, Indiana Fever Hit Huge Achievement Without Even Playing Game

Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever have been the hottest team in the WNBA since the end of the Olympic break, winning six of their last seven games to get to 17-16 on the season. They’ve been so good that on Tuesday night they hit a huge achievement without even playing a game.

Thanks to losses by the Chicago Sky and the Atlanta Dream, Clark and the Fever clinched a spot in the WNBA playoffs for the first time since 2016. This is even more impressive when you consider the team got off to an 0-5 start, which had many people wondering if Clark would be able to adapt to the professional level in her rookie year.

It looks like that has all been worked out, as the Fever have won four straight and are looking forward to making noise in the postseason and Clark is looking like the favorite to win the Rookie of the Year award.

The team had fun celebrating the achievement:

WE’RE IN.
we have officially clinched a spot in the 2024 @WNBA playoffs 🔥
📝 https://t.co/lmq97tihkJ pic.twitter.com/xK8Tg9izY4
— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) September 4, 2024

our fans are HYPE for the playoffs 👏 pic.twitter.com/ON5drWqwrJ
— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) September 4, 2024

checking off boxes 😮‍💨
the squad wrote down their goals for the 2024 @WNBA season. pic.twitter.com/Ia97XJeVmG
Advertisement

— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) September 4, 2024

pic.twitter.com/AOuMwrrhzY
— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) September 4, 2024

The Fever are back in action Wednesday night when they host the Sparks.

Source link

Indiana

Central Indiana Top Workplaces: Here’s the list of 2026 honorees

Published

1 hour ago

May 7, 2026

Press Room

Central Indiana Top Workplaces: Here’s the list of 2026 honorees

Indianapolis Star
| Indianapolis Star

These employers were recognized by the annual Top Workplaces employee survey conducted by Energage, working in partnership with IndyStar.

Top large companies

Progressive Insurance
Eight Eleven Family of Companies
Shepherd Insurance
LEL Home Services
Merchants Bank / Merchants Capital
Tendercare Home Health Services
Rohrman Automotive Group
Team Rehabilitation
Wabash Center, Inc.
Brighton Hospice
Mainscape
The Indianapolis Public Library
Greenix
Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers
Indiana Members Credit Union
Celigo
Round Room LLC
Freedom Mortgage
Thompson Thrift
Kirby Risk
Ren
Morgan Properties
American Specialty Health, Incorporated
Towne Properties
New Palestine Community Schools
Planes Companies
Panda Restaurant Group
Fifth Third Bank
Flaherty & Collins Properties
Indiana Department of Revenue
Republic Airways
RCI
Cox Enterprises
PERFICIENT
Grand Appliance
PT Solutions
Centerstone
Peterman Brothers
Groundworks
Damar Services
Kloeckner Metals
CBIZ
Graybar
Resultant

Top midsize companies

Paradigm Health
SEP
New Hope of Indiana
Scopelitis Law Firm (Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary)
Bath Experts, LLC
Opportunities for Positive Growth
Hensley Legal Group, PC
TBC Hotels
The BAM Companies
BSA
Northview Church
Northwestern Mutual
Goodman Campbell Brain and Spine
Dauby O’Connor & Zaleski, LLC
Quality Plumbing & Heating
Meyer Najem
The Garrett Companies
Commonwealth Engineers, Inc.
Family Express
GVC Mortgage
Hays + Sons
InPwr Inc.
Kinetic Advantage
Schahet Hotels, Inc.
LER TechForce
Envelop Group
Unified Group Services, Inc.
Knowledge Services
Key Benefit Administrators
Reynolds Farm Equipment, LLC
ARBOR HOMES
Total Quality Logistics – TQL
North Mechanical Contracting & Service
Indiana Donor Network
Royal United Mortgage
Perfection Group
Eye Surgeons of Indiana
ALOM

Top small companies

Bailey & Wood Financial Group
Indesign, LLC
Children’s Therapy Connection
Vaco Indianapolis
The Peterson Company
Express Employment Professionals
ProKids
Pension Fund of the Christian Church
Mission Mechanical
Robert Dietrick Co., Inc.
Loren Wood Builders
PulteGroup-IN
BGBC, a Springline company
NCW
Visit Indy
WorldTrips
Aerocore Technologies LLC
Vikan North America
ready-2-xecute
DirectEmployers
USI Consultants
SJCA, Inc.
Indy Auto Man
Kirkpatrick Management Company
Indiana Biosciences Research Institute
Engaging Solutions, LLC
Exos
Indiana Health Information Exchange
Patterson-Horth
Office360
Netfor
Haggard & Stocking Assoicates
National Trade Supply
Fairchild Communication Systems
Adelta Logis, Inc.
EMC Precision

Special Awards

APPRECIATION

Criteria: I feel genuinely appreciated at this company.

Winner: Scopelitis Law Firm (Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary)

BENEFITS PACKAGE

Criteria: I am very satisfied with my benefits package.

Winner: PulteGroup-IN

CLUED IN SENIOR MANAGEMENT

Criteria: Senior managers understand what is really happening at this company.

Winner: Indesign, LLC

COMMUNICATION

Criteria: I feel well-informed about important decisions at this company.

Winner: New Hope of Indiana

DIRECTION

Criteria: I believe this company is going in the right direction.

Winner: Paradigm Health

DOERS

Criteria: At this company, we do things efficiently and well.

Winner: Children’s Therapy Connection

LEADERSHIP

Criteria: I have confidence in the leadership team of this company.

Winner: Quinn Shepherd, Shepherd Insurance

LEADERSHIP

Criteria: I have confidence in the leadership team of this company.

Winner: Mike Wood, Bailey & Wood Financial Group

LEADERSHIP

Criteria: I have confidence in the leadership team of this company.

Winner: Andrea Schwartz, Opportunities for Positive Growth

MANAGERS

Criteria: My manager helps me learn and grow. My manager cares about my concerns.

Winner: REN

MEANINGFULNESS

Criteria: My job makes me feel like I am part of something meaningful.

Winner: LEL Home Services

NEW IDEAS

Criteria: New ideas are encouraged at this company.

Winner: Progressive Insurance

VALUES

Criteria: This company operates by strong values.

Winner: BSA

WELL-BEING

Criteria: This company does a great job of prioritizing employee well-being.

Winner: The Peterson Company

WORK/LIFE FLEXIBILITY

Criteria: I have the flexibility I need to balance my work and personal life.

Winner: Merchants Bank / Merchants Capital

Source link

Indiana

Indiana Fever franchise valuation has skyrocketed with Caitlin Clark

Published

14 hours ago

May 6, 2026

Press Room

Indiana Fever franchise valuation has skyrocketed with Caitlin Clark

The latest effects of Caitlin Clark’s presence in Indianapolis were revealed in a new report from Sportico.

According to Sportico, since drafting Clark in 2024, the Fever’s franchise valuation has jumped from $90 million to $560 million entering the 2026 season. The Fever’s franchise valuation ranks third in the WNBA, trailing only the Golden State Valkyries ($850 million) and the New York Liberty ($600 million).

That is a 522% increase and means the Fever are worth six times as much now as compared to before they drafted Clark.

Source link

Indiana

How Amish culture created Indiana’s first high school boy to run a sub-4-minute mile

Published

1 day ago

May 6, 2026

Press Room

How Amish culture created Indiana’s first high school boy to run a sub-4-minute mile

Noah Bontrager is the first Indiana high school boy to run a mile in under four minutes.
The 18-year-old from a small school in Shipshewana credits his work ethic to the local Amish culture.
Bontrager ran a 3:59.48 mile at the New Balance indoor nationals in Boston, setting a meet record.

TOPEKA, Ind. – Indiana’s first high school boy to run a sub-4-minute mile is not from Indianapolis or its collar counties. Nor from the population centers outside Chicago, Cincinnati or Louisville, Ky.

Noah Bontrager has instead been influenced by the Amish culture of the state’s northeast corner. The 18-year-old lives in Shipshewana and is a senior at Westview High School, enrollment of 343, almost small enough to be in the smallest of Indiana’s four basketball classes.

The LaGrange County school is 15 miles south of the Michigan border, located on County Road 600 W., where horse-drawn buggies clip clop along the pavement. The track is fenced off from farmland. Horses graze nearby, and a cow once delivered a calf in an adjacent pasture, right in the middle of practice.

Running has evolved since 1954, when Roger Bannister first broke the 4-minute barrier at Oxford, England. Now it is a sport of high tech, featuring propulsive supershoes, biomechanic analysis, wavelights for record attempts, and the Strava app tracking workouts,

Yet tech doesn’t break records. Runners do.

This sport rewards simplicity and industriousness, two characteristics of the Amish lifestyle. Bontrager said he marvels at junior high runners who do chores before school, attend classes and track practice, then do more chores after school.

“I like to say they work all day. I think I got that from them,” he said. “And from my mom and dad.”

Bontrager is a Swiss-German Mennonite/Amish family name, originating from the German Bornträger, meaning transporter of liquids.

Noah’s paternal grandmother, Judy Bontrager, died in 2020 after a seven-year fight against pancreatic cancer. She once set trusses on a barn while a softball-sized tumor grew inside her.

Noah’s grandfather, Josey Bontrager, had dyslexia and never learned to read. He started a small-scale manufacturing business, Shipshewana Hardwoods, in the early 1970s. He built it into a company that became PalletOne, which was acquired for $232 million in 2020. Noah’s father, Lyle, still speaks Dutch to the grandfather.

“How do you build a multimillion-dollar business when you can’t read. How do you do that?” said Lyle, who is Westview’s cross-country coach.

“Stuff like that is ingrained inside of him somewhere. Just determination and grit.”

How Noah Bontrager became Indiana’s first high school boy to run a sub-4-minute

During the 2000s, other Indiana boys had ambitions to run a sub-4-minute mile: Austin Mudd, Cole Hocker, Lucas Guerra, Kole Mathison, Martin Barco. None made it, with Mudd’s outdoor 4:01.83 standing as a state record since 2011.

Bontrager had thought about it for a couple of years. At state last year, he set a 1,600-meter meet record of 4:02.60, equivalent to a 4:04.02 mile. Yet it was startling when he actually broke through.

For one thing, he was ill at the end of cross-country season, finishing second at state, behind Springs Valley’s Calvin Seitz. Bontrager was 43^rd in the Brooks nationals Dec. 13 at San Diego – close to last place – and was 78 seconds behind winner Jackson Spencer of Herriman, Utah. It was such a pitiable run that Spencer consoled Bontrager afterward.

For another, Bontrager said skeptics didn’t think he should run the mile March 15 at the New Balance indoor nationals.

“Really, the mile? You should do the two-mile,” they told him.

Bontrager, a drummer, had a concert on Friday of the two-mile and declined to abandon Westview’s band. He would chase the dream on Sunday. Except when he arrived in Boston, meet officials told him he might not be racing the top milers. Maybe the second-to-last heat, they said.

One runner dropped out, and Bontrager was in the fast heat. He was all-in.

He was in third with 400 meters left, then seized the lead by running the last two laps in 58.57 seconds. Usually undemonstrative, Bontrager thrust his right index finger in the air as he broke the tape. His time – 3 minutes, 59.48 seconds – was a meet record and made him No. 7 on the all-time high school indoor list.

Sitting with his father in a restaurant afterward, enjoying a “juicy hamburger,” he was still processing it all.

“I was kind of in shock, even three hours after,” he said.

Perhaps more shocking?

In three subsequent meets, all in the Indianapolis area, Bontrager has sent vibes that sub-4:00 is just one step on a long journey. He could be on a world stage as soon as August.

Multi-sport athlete

Growing up, Bontrager was immersed in running culture but wasn’t confined to that. He played youth basketball and baseball, including a travel team with the latter. His peers went on to reach the Class 2A state basketball title game this year and baseball semistate last year.

“I do actually have hand/eye coordination, unlike the stereotypical runner,” he said.

His parents, Lyle and Erin, are former runners who were track coaches at the junior high. Noah discovered he was better at running than at other sports. Running was “the norm,” he reasoned. At Westview, it was.

Westview’s track coach, Matt Jones, and Lyle Bontrager are cousins.

Jones was seventh in the 1988 state cross-country meet, leading the Warriors to fifth as a team. Besides coaching, he is an electrician in the recreational vehicle industry and farms 350 acres.

Another Westview runner, Andrew Begley, was a four-time state champion in the mid-1990s before joining NCAA championship teams at Arkansas. Westview was third in the state in cross-country in 2017, behind champion Carmel, whose enrollment was 13 times greater.

And when Bontrager was an eighth-grader, he helped Westview win a state title in middle-school cross-country.

“Jumping the fence” is a phrase used to describe an Amish person, often a teenager, leaving the lifestyle to live in the modern world. Following the 1972 Supreme Court ruling in Wisconsin v. Yoder, Amish children are exempt from compulsory high school attendance.

Noah and three siblings were not raised Amish. Their Christian faith remains foundational, even though the parents attend one church and Noah another.

“He will give glory to God for the gift he’s been given,” his mother said.

No one in the family has graduated from college. Noah is committed to Notre Dame. His brother, Cole, 19, who ran 1,600 meters in 4:32 in high school, is a freshman at Rose-Hulman Institute.

Outsprinting the treadmill

Determination and grit – and talent – aren’t solely responsible for Noah Bontrager’s rise. Although his father and Jones are eager for him to join a sophisticated regimen at Notre Dame, it would be hard to identify better high school coaching.

No wonder Bontrager said he trusts in the training.

He runs perhaps 55 miles a week in the fall, 45 in the spring. He doesn’t do junk miles – i.e. slow runs for volume. Weight training is reflected in the pecs on his 5-8, 130-pound frame.

One workout is two sets of three-mile tempo runs at a 5:05-mile pace, with two minutes of rest between sets. For context, that is fast enough to be all-state in cross-country once, then twice, all in less than 33 minutes.

He did such a workout on a treadmill on a recent rainy day, then finished with 300-meter sprints. The machine maxes out at 16 mph. He was outsprinting the treadmill.

“His workouts are unreal,” Jones said. “Whatever I throw at him, he just does.”

Similarly unreal has been Bontrager’s assault on records:

>> March 28, Fall Creek Pavilion. He set a small-school meet record of 9:08.35 in the 3,200 at the Hoosier State Relays, running the last 800 in 1:59.33. Eighty minutes later, he ran a 1:50.88 anchor to bring Westview from ninth to fourth in the 4×800 relay.

Remember his devotion to band? He played drums until the third quarter of Westview’s 2A basketball title game against Parke Heritage at Bankers Life Fieldhouse that day, then hustled to the track.

>> April 17, Franklin Central. He set a Flashes Showcase record of 4:02.48, winning by six seconds. It was fastest mile ever run by a high schooler on Indiana soil.

>> April 24, Carmel. He ran the 3,200 in 8:42.18, just a tenth off the state record, closing in 57.89 – or eight seconds faster than Seitz’s last lap.

Bontrager could repeat his double win in the June 5 state meet at North Central. But he might skip the 1,600, focusing on a fast time in the 3,200. (Fastest in the nation is 8:31.80 by Spencer.)

Beyond that, there is the 3,000 in the under-20 nationals June 18-19 at Eugene, Ore. That selects a team for the U20 World Championships, set for Aug. 5-9, also at Eugene.

“That’s the goal,” Bontrager said.

He once thought he was no sprinter, but that was dispelled when he ran 400 meters in 49.78 two days after the Hoosier State Relays.

International racing requires closing speed. He has that now. He already had the worth ethic.

That’s a way of life around here.

Contact David Woods at dwoods1411@gmail.com.

Source link