Haynia Places Second in Nike Indoor National Championship 5K

Make it two for two.

Max Haynia, for the second consecutive season, reached the pinnacle meet of his sport after competing in the championship 5K at Nike Indoor Nationals this past weekend at the Nike Track and Field Center at The Armory in New York City.

The West Point-bound senior, who had competed at Nike Cross Country Nationals in Oregon this past fall, placed second in the race in 14:49.19 behind Hunter Jones, a senior from Benzie Central High School in Thompsonville, Michigan, who is running at Wake Forest this fall.

Haynia didn’t shy away from the fact that the 5K was longer than the 3,200-meter race he had run all indoor season. In fact, he said he prefers the longer distances. Haynia was well aware of Jones going into the race and had already decided he wasn’t going to try to keep up with him. Jones, sure enough, went out fast.

“Going out with him would have been tough,” Haynia admitted. “I could have went with him, but that wasn’t the plan. My plan was to set a relative pace of 4:45, and I was able to do that, but at one point I felt like I needed to make a gap, so with about a mile to go, which is eight laps or so, I took over second place and kept it from there.”

The goal for Haynia now, with the spring season starting this week, is to make it to nationals in all three seasons of his senior year, and then some.

“I’ll take a little bit of time to get my body straight again, and then I’ll start running in the big invites and try and go back and win states,” he said. “All-American, that’s the goal.”

Haynia was far from the only runner from Westhampton Beach to compete at nationals. His teammate on the boys team, Trevor Hayes, competed in the Emerging Elite 1 mile race. The junior finished 20th overall out of 37 runners in 4:25.80.

Sophomore Lily Strebel was one of a handful of Westhampton Beach girls who competed. Running in the championship mile, Strebel, who ran and qualified for states in both the 1,000- and 1,500-meter races, placed 16th overall out of 27 runners, crossing the finish line in 4:58.59, a new school record, surpassing Mary Sullivan’s 2003 indoor mile record of 5:03.

Westhampton Beach head coach John Broich recalled about a year ago when Strebel wanted to join the team to get in shape. A year later, she’s competing for county and state titles and reaching nationals.

“Last year, I was iffy about running, but I’m glad that I tried it,” she said. “I am happy to run a sub-5 in the mile. That was my main goal. I didn’t care about the placement.”

Strebel was joined by teammates Halle Geller, Sydney Beardslee, Emily Tully and a 4x800-meter relay team. Geller finished the Emerging Elite 60-meter dash in 7.94 seconds, which equates to a 7.37 55-meter dash, which is what is typically competed at high school meets. Beardslee finished 22nd in the mile race walk in 10:00.68. Oona Murphy, Sophie DePierro, Jamie Kelly and Gabby Wendel finished the 4x800-meter relay in 10:55.33.