FAYETTEVILLE -- Chris Bucknam, head coach of Arkansas' men's cross country and track and field teams, naturally will be focused on how his Razorbacks compete at the John McDonnell Invitational today and Saturday.
But forgive Bucknam if he takes a few minutes to watch the women's 1,500 meters Saturday night.
TRACK AND FIELD
JOHN MCDONNELL INVITATIONAL
WHERE John McDonnell Field, Fayetteville
WHEN Today and Saturday. Today’s events, which start at 1:30 p.m. and go through 7:30 p.m., are mostly for high school teams. Saturday’s events, primarily with college teams, start at 10 a.m. and go through 7:40 p.m. Prime time events will be 5-7:30 p.m. Saturday.
WHO Arkansas’ No. 3 women’s team and No. 7 mean’s team will play host to Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, Memphis, Missouri State and Tulsa.
TICKETS $5 admission. Free for Arkansas students.
Bucknam's daughter, Kate, is a redshirt junior at Minnesota and will run the 1,500. She ran at Fayetteville High School before going to Minnesota.
"It will be fun to have Kate home," Bucknam said. "We don't get to see much of her. I'm really proud of her and what she's done at Minnesota.
"She had the opportunity to go to some mid-major type schools where she could be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, but being here in an SEC environment, she wanted to go to a major school knowing the challenge was going to be extremely tough to make the team.
"I was a little nervous about it, because you want your kids to experience the big meets. As a developmental athlete, she worked her way up."
Kate Bucknam has become a team co-captain and ran for Minnesota at the Big Ten and NCAA Cross Country Championships last fall. She finished 239th at the NCAA meet but gained fame and praise in the running world by helping a Baylor runner who fell about 25 meters from the finish line because of exhaustion.
Video of what happened, captured by the Flotrack website, looks like an NCAA commercial for sportsmanship.
Baylor freshman Annie Dunlap fell three times as she continued to try to stagger to the finish line as other runners kept going by her. Her teammate, Madie Zimmerman, stopped and helped Dunlap to her feet, then supported her left side.
Bucknam, who didn't know either runner, stopped and grabbed Dunlap's right arm and assisted Zimmerman in getting her to the finish.
"I thought I taught her to just jump over those people and run to the finish, but her mom [Cindy] taught her better than I did," Chris Bucknam said with a laugh. "It was a reaction that Kate had, that sisterhood type of thing.
"They were all in it together and she had to help. That's Kate."
Kate Bucknam told ESPN.com she didn't hesitate to help Zimmerman.
"I had to make a quick decision and I was like, 'You know what, we're almost there. Let's end this. She's hurting,' " Bucknam said. "From a runner's perspective, we all have mutual respect for one another. We all sacrifice so much just to get to that meet."
Chris Bucknam didn't see the end of the women's race and didn't know what his daughter had done until his cell phone started filling up with messages about it.
"I heard from former athletes who were in Europe," Bucknam said.
Kate Bucknam hadn't told her father what happened until he asked her.
"She said, 'Dad, I didn't have a great race, but I wanted to make something good happen,' " Bucknam said. "I don't think Kate knew the magnitude of it until it went kind of viral on the Internet and Twitter. It was pretty cool."
Kate Bucknam told Runners World magazine she was grateful for the opportunity to help Zimmerman get Dunlap across the finish line.
"Every runner in that race sacrificed so much to get there, and I know all three of us had a rough race," she said. "The least we deserved was to finish, and I wasn't going to finish without her."
Sports on 04/10/2015