Running Hall adds four inductees

The Class of 2026 was another good one for the WNY Running Hall of Fame. Here are the introductory speeches for all of them:

Ray Appenheimer

Ray Appenheimer has been associated with the sport of running for almost 40 years. That’s a pretty good run, pardon the pun, and qualifies him for “lifer” status.

Appenheimer was a standout runner for St. Joe’s in the late 1980s. He led the Marauders to the League AA championship in the Msgr. Martin Association championship in cross-country in the fall of 1989. In the following spring, Ray was one of the top track athletes in the area – ranking near the top in the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 meters.

That led him to Colgate University. He started slowly, but soon decided to follow along with his coach’s advice on how to improve. It turns out Art McKinnon knew something about the sports after all, and Appenheimer became a dedicated disciple. Appenheimer became one of the Raiders’ all-time greatest runners, earning five All-American honors and was twice selected as the Patriot League’s scholar-athlete of the year.

He said as a senior that he wanted to find out how good he could be, and did just that. After graduating, Ray joined the Nike Farm Team in California, and won a national title at the 1999 Cross Country Championships and at the 2000 United States Indoor Track and Field Championships. He qualified for the 2000 Olympic Trials in the 5,000 meters.

An Achilles injury cut short his career a bit earlier than we all would have liked, but nothing was going to get in the way of his devotion to the sports of running. Eventually, Appenheimer landed a job as the Director of Track & Field and Cross Country at Oberlin College. He had a terrific 20-year run in that position at the Ohio school. The team claimed multiple conference titles, and its teams were nationally ranked several times. Ray also helped several runners reach All-American status.

Appenheimer became an associate director of athletics at Oberlin in 2024, so he’s still around runners and running. He probably wouldn’t have it any other way. Please welcome to the Hall of Fame, Ray Appenheimer.

Matt Glynn

As a business reporter for The Buffalo News, Matt Glynn never had the chance to write about the exploits of one of the top long-distance runners in Western New York history: himself. He had to leave it to others to tell his story, and there’s plenty to discuss. Luckily, he was always good with dealing with the media.

Glynn has been running since the early 1980s, but he says he was rather average during his time at Lewiston-Porter High School. Matt ran on his own at Syracuse University, and discovered a love for longer distances. He became more serious about running in his 20s, and he was ready to make an impact when he moved back to Western New York in 2000.

The marathon is considered the ultimate test for runners, and Glynn has more than passed it several times. He ran his personal best of 2 hours, 30 minutes and 43 seconds in Minnesota in 2004. Matt ran a 2:34 marathon in New York in 2003, and a 2:36 marathon in Boston in 2005. That put him in the top 70 of both races.

Glynn didn’t need to go 26 miles to show he was fast. He has some half-marathon victories on his resume, including one in Buffalo in 2005. That was the year he also put some demons aside. He had been looking up at Mike Heitzenrater in the News’ Runner of the Year series for a few years.  Those second-place finishes can wear on a person, especially if he was a Buffalo Bills’ fan in the early 1990s. But he broke through the barrier in the series when he finally took home first prize. Susan Lucci would have been proud of him.

Matt is still running well in his mid-50s, taking home a victory in a Niagara County 5K this year. In fact, he’s won a race every year since 1995 – which may be a local record. Glynn has started to prepare for the Richmond Marathon later this year. His two sons also have been known to put on running shoes and follow in Dad’s footsteps, almost literally.  

His induction tonight caps a career that’s worth a front-page headline. I can see it now: “Glynn enters Hall of Fame.” Welcome to someone who was the best anonymous source a running columnist ever had, Matt Glynn.

Linda (Rogers) Haas

Linda Haas has been a good runner ever since she took up the sport in 1974. Don’t be embarrassed if you weren’t aware of her talent. When she was in high school in Cheektowaga, cross-country running wasn’t offered as a girls’ sport. That made it a little difficult to receive any attention.

The first reference in a newspaper about her running exploits came in 1976. Linda Rogers – as she was known then - won the 400 in 1 minute, 2 seconds, in the Erie County Parks and Recreation Department’s Track and Field meet. Her time set a meet record. By the way, another future Hall of Famer – Sue Schaefer of Clarence – won the mile run that day.

Linda had to wait to make an impact until she arrived at Erie Community College. There, she became an All-American in cross country – the first athlete from ECC to receive that honor – and matched that distinction in indoor track and outdoor track. Haas was the school’s Female Athlete of the Year in 1978. She is in ECC’s Hall of Fame.

From there it was on to Fort Hayes State University in Kansas, where she became one of the great athletes in the history of that school. Linda was a two-time All-American there, and set nine school records. No wonder she was named the top female athlete at Fort Hayes State. She was inducted into the Tigers’ Hall of Fame in 2003.

Haas settled into the rest of her life after college, but she wasn’t quite done with running. Linda broke three hours for the marathon, and 18 minutes for 5 kilometers. Even better, she continued to show the rest of us not to stop running, as she was a frequent age-group award winner in The Buffalo News’ series for many years.

Linda probably doesn’t think of herself as a pioneer, but she was one of the first to start the movement toward more inclusion in local women’s athletics. Thanks for leading the way, Hall of Famer Linda Haas.

Aileen Hoak(-Lange)

In April of 1998, The Buffalo News described a freshman runner from Nardin Academy as “an athlete to watch.” Here we are, well into the next century, and we’re still watching Aileen Hoak-Lange.

In the fall of 2000, Hoak capped her career at Nardin by winning the Msgr. Martin Association All-Catholic championship at Delaware Park. It was a step up from her second-place finish the year before. From there it was on to the college ranks at Canisius, where Aileen was the top finisher for the Golden Griffins as a freshman in the conference championships in 2001. As a senior, Hoak ranked as one of the nation’s best cross country runners.

But it was her post-graduate work that earned attention. She was The Buffalo News’ Runner of the Year award in 2008, as she interrupted Allison Carr’s run of eight such titles in the course of 11 years.

Hoak won both the Turkey Trot and Shamrock Run three times. She finished second in the Buffalo Marathon in 2013 with a time of 2 hours, 51 minutes and 22 seconds. After the race, she had the best running quote in history about an opponent who was determined to go only as fast as necessary to beat her. “If I stopped at the port-a-potty, she would have handed me the toilet paper,” she said. Aileen was even faster a year later in Boston, going more than 26 miles in 2:50:08.

Later on, she picked up a hyphenated name via marriage, and had the distinction of finishing second overall in the 2019 Buffalo Marathon while pregnant. She wore a “Baby on Board” message on her shirt to announce the news. Hoak-Lange and her passenger finished in 2:55:02.

Aileen remains a threat to win races almost 30 years after she first came into public view, as she finished third in the 2026 Buffalo Half Marathon. She also had a podium finish on Sunday in the Bob Ivory Run. It’s a career worthy of the Hall of Fame, and it’s not over yet. We look forward to more accomplishments, Aileen Hoak-Lange.