Indiana
How Amish culture created Indiana’s first high school boy to run a sub-4-minute mile
Noah Bontrager is Indiana’s first sub-4-minute high school miler
Noah Bontrager is Indiana’s first sub-4-minute high school miler
Special to IndyStar
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 43rd 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.
Protesters in Merrillville, Indiana, gathered outside a private event for Indiana Gov. Mike Braun to voice concerns about data centers. Fox Chicago’s Bret Buganski reports live from the demonstration.
Indiana man surprised with free dental work in Pontiac
Jeremiah Johnson has experienced a tumultuous life that has taken him through tragedy, rehab, and prison before getting back on his feet. An avid fisherman, he thought he was visiting Michigan to just go angling. Instead, he was surprised with $10,000 in free dental work.
(FOX 2) – Jeremiah Johnson thought he was coming to Michigan to fish.
After all, the Indiana native is quite the angler. And fortunately for him, he did net a new catch in Crescent Lake. However, his visit to Southeast Michigan was about much more than casting a line.
Afterward, a heartwarming surprise awaited him in the form of $10,000 in free dental work.
Big picture view:
Johnson wore a blindfold as he was walked up to Royal Chiropractic and Dental Center in Pontiac on June 11. Organized by Bassquatch Hunter host Mike McKinstry, he guided Johnson to the surprise — as well as the latest stage of redemption.
Johnson lost his brother at a young age, catalyzing a fall into addiction and eventually incarceration.
“I lost my twin brother when I was really young, went down some dark roads, became an addict then ended up in and out of jail, in and out of rehabs,” he said. “Finally, ended up going to prison, did a few years in prison and came home and met a woman, changed everything, made a family.”
But even as he worked to recover and build a new life, he did so with significant dental issues and missing teeth.
Over the next two weeks, he’ll receive a full slate of dentistry.
“This was supposed to be a fishing trip, which we did get to fish, but then a huge surprise at the end,” he said. “To be able to smile and talk to people without having to worry about how they perceive me.”
Mike McKinstry and Jeremiah Johnson outside Royal Chiropractic and Dental Center in Pontiac.
The Source: Interviews done at Royal Chiropractic and Clinic in Pontiac were cited for this story.
(WXIN/WTTV) — A man who is reportedly a local hospital chaplain and contract worker for the Department of Child Services is now facing felony child sex crime charges in both Indiana and Illinois.
Jose Briseno, 60, is currently being held in Marion County Jail on charges of child exploitation and possession of child sex abuse material. He also faces one count of internet child solicitation as a Level 5 Felony in Tazewell County, Illinois.
While court documents state that Briseno lives in a home on the north side of Indianapolis, his jail booking information states that he is a Mexican citizen. Court documents filed last week in Marion Superior Court 35 detail how he has previously worked for several child services groups.
Indianapolis police began investigating Briseno on June 3 when authorities in Illinois sent a tip that a man living in Indy may be involved in child sex crimes. The tip stated that the suspect was previously contracted to work with Illinois DCFS and had since moved to Indianapolis.
The suspect was later identified as Briseno, who had reportedly helped transport children to parental visitations while working for DCFS. It is during this time that Briseno allegedly met the 15-year-old girl he is now accused of soliciting nude photographs from.
Briseno is said to have contacted the teen girl over social media apps with the username “tanman1966,” the suspect’s birth year. While pretending to be a younger man named Pablo, the 60-year-old allegedly convinced the victim to send explicit images over text.
When the girl realized she had actually been communicating with Briseno, she said she tried to block him. However, Briseno allegedly threatened to disseminate her nude photographs and forced her to produce more child sex abuse material, all while sending explicit material of his own.
This alleged solicitation all occurred after Briseno had moved to an Indianapolis home near 86th Street and Ditch Road, according to court documents. Investigators later matched the IP address to his residence on Kings Cove Court and brought Briseno in for questioning.
The suspect reportedly told police that he was employed as a hospital chaplain with Gentiva as well as a case manager with the Indiana Department of Child Services. DCS officials confirmed to FOX59/CBS4’s Angela Ganote that Briseno was contracted but never employed by DCS.
Court records state that, over the past few years, Briseno has worked as a pastor for First Christian Church, First Christian Church of Mason City Inc, and West Union Christian Church in Illinois. He has also worked for DCS contractors in Indiana and Illinois.
While attempting to track down Briseno, investigators reportedly found that he was working for a hospice care center in Terre Haute. A Facebook post reviewed by FOX59/CBS4 shows that a man named “Chaplain Joe,” or “Mr. Mariachi,” was employed at Southerncare, Inc. Research as recently as May 22.
Online jail records show that Briseno was booked last Tuesday, June 9, into the Marion County Adult Detention Center. The court has since set a $5,000 cash bond.
Online court records show Briseno was charged last Friday, June 12, with Possession of Child Sex Abuse Material as a Level 6 Felony. An initial hearing was reportedly held on Monday afternoon in front of Judge Charnette Garner. A pre-trial hearing is now scheduled for July 27.
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