Arkansas men’s track and field coach Chris Bucknam said last week that he wanted to have a field events coach hired soon. As expected, he turned to one of his former assistants at Northern Iowa to fill the vacancy on his coaching staff.

  Bucknam announced Wednesday that Travis Geopfert has been hired as Arkansas’ new jumps, throws and multi-events coach. Geopfert replaces Dick Booth, who has moved on to Florida after being fired last month after 27 years with the Razorbacks.

  Geopfert took over as Northern Iowa’s track and field and cross country coach after Bucknam left last summer to replace John McDonnell at Arkansas. Geopfert spent six years with the Panthers, and in his one year as UNI’s head coach, he won the Missouri Valley Conference indoor and outdoor championships. He was also named the 2009 MVC indoor and outdoor coach of the Year.

  ”As we progressed through a national search for the position, it only re-affirmed my assessment that Travis is one of collegiate track and field’s most successful young and talented coaches,” Bucknam said in a statement released through the university. “He has a tremendous ability to relate to student-athletes. They gravitate to him.

  ”Also, his extensive knowledge of all the field events is crucial to the position he is taking on. As an assistant and head coach, he has seen success in every event he has coached. His success and versatility are exactly what I was looking for during this process.”

Former Arkansas assistant men’s track coach Dick Booth has found a new job.

Booth, who was fired by Arkansas coach Chris Bucknam last week after 27 years with the Razorbacks, will be joining the staff at Florida. Gators coach Mike Holloway announced the hiring a little while ago. A release, which you can read here, says that Booth will be responsible for coaching the jumps and assisting with recruiting and other key phases of the program.

“It’s weird,” Booth told me a few minutes ago. “It’s kind of unusual. But I’m very happy. The way things have happened here in the last few days, you never know. It was kind of a shock at first. It caught me pretty much totally unaware. It certainly wasn’t the turn in my life that I had planned. So then you just kind of go along for the ride and see how things turn out.”

Booth said he knew Florida had an opening on its staff several weeks ago, but didn’t know if it was still there after he was surprisingly fired by Bucknam last week. Booth said he needed a few hours to come to grips with the fact he was no longer coaching for the Razorbacks before figuring out his next move. The same day he was fired, he placed a call to Florida.

The rest is history.

“I felt like everything was going to be OK,” Booth said about his Arkansas departure. “I’d be finishing up my career in Fayetteville. It didn’t work out that way, but the alternative is just fine.”

It’s an interesting move by the Gators. One that will keep Booth in the same conference. He likes the thought, too, although Booth said it’s not for vindictive reasons. He just wants to continue coaching in the best conference. Florida is pretty good, too, after finishing tied for second at the NCAA Outdoor meet in Fayetteville last month.

Arkansas will see Booth with his new team a couple of times next season, too, because the SEC Indoors and the NCAA Indoors will be held in Fayetteville. Can someone say intriguing storyline?

“It’s kind of a nice little bonus,” Booth said. “So I’ll get to see our guys here and come in with a good team and have a good chance to be successful.”

The College World Series has been all the buzz so far this week. And rightfully so.

But if you live in Northwest Arkansas you’ve probably noticed something today. There’s a lot of people running in and around Fayetteville. Why is that?

Well, the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships will begin at John McDonnell Field tomorrow morning at 10:30. The four-day event is being held in Fayetteville for the first time, leaving us plenty to talk about through Saturday’s finale. It’s a good thing Alex Abrams and I will be out there every day giving you all kinds of info from the meet.

Check the Hog Blog for tons of stuff. Check our Twitter pages, too, @NWAOnlineHogs and @NWARobbie.

A handful of track coaches were on hand for a press conference on Arkansas’ campus today to preview the meet. We won’t have any space in the paper for notes from the press conference, but I’ll paste them here on the blog to get you ready to run.

BLESSING OR CURSE?
Arkansas is hosting the NCAA Outdoor meet for the first time in school history and men’s track coach Chris Bucknam said there are two ways to look at the honor.

“It can be a blessing or a curse,” Bucknam said. “You can get too emotional. It’s a four-day track meet. It’s not like a football game where we go in saying we’re defending our turf, let’s do this and everybody charges out and plays the game. It’s not that simple for us. We have to do it over four days.”

Bucknam said he doesn’t want his team to get too emotional early on, believing it could be counterproductive. Instead, he has told everyone to relax, concentrate on their events and work their way into the finals.

Women’s coach Lance Harter said his team is trying to follow the same strategy. He realizes his athletes will have more attention placed on them this week from friends, family and fans because Arkansas is the home team.

He doesn’t want it to take away from their performance, though.

“We tried to address it real early on, there’s going to be a lot of people pulling on them, wanting favors, that wanted to be a part of their lives last minute,” Harter said. “They need to stay focused, treat it as other meets that we’ve run this year.”

MCDONNELL’S DREAM
One perk to hosting the meet is the chance to show off John McDonnell Field to the rest of the college track and field scene.
Harter said the NCAA Outdoor Championships is a memorable moment for the program and former Arkansas men’s coach John McDonnell.

“One thing that needs to be noted, this was a dream for Coach McDonnell come true,” Harter said. “He always talked aobut the idea of hosting the national championship. Eventually we were able to build an indoor facility and were able to host those championships. And then his next dream was to have an outdoor facility capable of hosting a national meet.”

Oregon coach Vin Lananna joked that the Razorbacks had other reasons for naming the stadium after McDonnell.
“As I drove up this morning and came out to the outdoor track and I saw John McDonnell track that was supposed to intimidate everybody,” Lananna said. “John has probably been the benchmark with which all programs measure their track and field programs.”

SMOOTH SAILING
Bucknam was asked to evaulate his first season at Arkansas after replacing McDonnell last summer. Bucknam said everything has gone about as well as he could’ve hoped since taking over the program.

“My kids have been really good,” Bucknam said. “We could’ve gone either way in the transition with a new coach. I think we’ve taken a positive step forward. I have to think it’s all due to the kids on my team that have accepted the coaching staff, accepted me.

“I think they saw that we were going to give a great effort. That’s all they needed to see.”

TRIPLE CROWN
Lananna’s Oregon squad has a chance to accomplish something McDonnell did in his time with the Razorbacks. After winning both the cross country and indoor track and field titles earlier this year, the Ducks are looking to capture the triple crown in Fayetteville.

Oregon has never accomplished the feat. Only two schools — Arkansas and Texas El-Paso — have done so on the men’s side.

However, the Ducks are the heavy favorites with a program loaded with talented athletes competing in Fayetteville this week.

“I hope to run into John and ask him for some advice on how to win all three of them,” Lananna said. “I’m afraid the advice he would give me would probably not be good to follow because he’d probably be rooting for the University of Arkansas to spoil that.”

Arizona State coach Greg Kraft said Lananna doesn’t need any advice. His team is talented enough to win the meet on its own.

“His team has just had momentum all year,” Kraft said. “They have tremendous star power. We’ve seen them and they’ve been incredibly impressive from our standpoint.”

WEDNESDAY’S SCHEDULE
The meet begins at 10:30 a.m. with the men’s hammer throws. Field events and the decathlon will be taking place all day.

Track events will begin with the 4×100 meter relay semifinals at 5 p.m. The men’s 5,000 meters is the final event of the night at 9:25.

The biggest event for the Arkansas men’s team is the long jump, which features Alain Bailey, Mychael Stewart and Tarik Batchelor.

The four-member, Arkansas women’s pole vault team also will begin their qualifying round of the NCAA Championships at 7:15 p.m.