It All Started with One Man’s Vision
Mar 12, 2026 | Track & Field, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
Travis Geopfert sits in the conference room at the Vanier Family Football Complex wearing a black polo shirt. It's 9:52 a.m. on July 15, 2024. In about an hour, he will be formally introduced as the seventh full-time Director of Track and Field/Cross Country in Kansas State history. He is picking between two dress shirts — one plain lavender, and one lavender and white. He goes with the plain lavender to go along with his off-white suit for the news conference.
He's already making important decisions.
Before he enters the Steel & Pipe Team Theatre, where he will be introduced by K-State Director of Athletics Gene Taylor, Geopfert sits down at the clear glass table inside the conference room. He crackles with energy. He talks about the weather, he talks about travel, and he talks about plans as he buttons up his plain lavender dress shirt. He cannot stop smiling. The 45-year-old Geopfert carries 22 years of coaching experience, including 12 at Arkansas. A native of Panora, Iowa, Geopfert was 2002 graduate of Northern Iowa, and an All-American who set multiple track records, and he has competed in 54 decathlons. He was an assistant coach on two NCAA Championship teams and earned USTFCCCA National Assistant of the Year awards following the 2013, 2014 and 2023 men's indoor seasons at Arkansas, along with the 2023 men's outdoor season.
Besides his two NCAA team championships, Geopfert has been a part of 24 top-10 NCAA team finishes and 37 conference team championships at Central Missouri, Northern Iowa, Arkansas and Tennessee.
Already, he has big plans for the Wildcats.
"Kansas State to a little degree is a well-kept secret," he says inside the conference room. "I don't want to keep it a secret anymore. I want the world to know about Kansas State track and field."
And now we're here.
In 19 short months Geopfert and his coaching staff have K-State poised in the penthouse among the blue-blood programs in the NCAA.
On February 3, K-State men's indoor team rose to its first-ever No. 1 ranking in the USTFCCCA national poll after the second week of the season. Meanwhile, the K-State women's indoor team steadily climbed from a top-30 team to a top-20 team to where it sits today.
Today, K-State joins Arkansas, Oregon and Texas Tech as the only Division I programs with both its men's and women's indoor teams ranked in the top 10. K-State men are ranked No. 5 — the highest ranking by a Big 12 men's team — and the women are ranked No. 9, as a total of 16 K-State athletes prepare to compete in the NCAA Indoor Championship on Friday and Saturday at the Randal Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
K-State's nine men set to compete at the NCAA Indoor Championship are tied for the fifth most by participating teams (Arkansas leads with 17 qualifiers), and it's the most by a Big 12 program, and it's the largest pool of K-State men's qualifiers at a NCAA Indoor Championship in more than 20 years. The seven women qualifiers at K-State are the most since 2015.
The best finish by a K-State men's team in the NCAA Indoor Championship was fifth place in 1966. The best finish by the women was fifth place in 1984.
"I'm pumped, man," Geopfert says. "I'm excited to go to Fayetteville and compete. The kids are loose and ready to go. We have a chip on our shoulder, there's no doubt, and we're just going to get after it and see what we can do. We're in a good situation. There's no pressure except for what we put on ourselves. Our standards and expectations are high. We want these athletes to have fun and, dude, let's see if we can take down some of the blue bloods and do this thing. The women can finish top 10 and the men?
"The men could be in the mix for the national title."
Gary Geopfert and his former wife Theresa raised their sons Travis and Tyler in Panora, Iowa, a town of about 1,200 residents located along the Middle Raccoon River, and about 50 miles west of Des Moines. The Geopfert's have lived on the same farmland for 46 years. Gary, 68, has been a building contractor for nearly five decades. At age 9, Gary attended his first Drake Relays in 1967 with his mother and stepfather. Gary ran the 100 meters and 200 meters in high school and has always been an avid follower of track and field. His hobby these days? He follows the track and field exploits of his boys and his grandchildren.
"Travis and I went to an indoor multi-event competition in Manhattan back around 2000 or 2001, and that was the only time I'd ever been to Manhattan until Travis took the job," Gary says. "Back then they competed in the fieldhouse, so it was a little different than now."
Travis and Tyler grew up playing all the major sports in the small Iowa town — football, baseball, basketball and track. Travis broke all the track records at Panorama Elementary School, then he competed in his first decathlon at age 14, and then he emerged as a star halfback and middle linebacker — a Panora High School starting freshman becoming a hometown hero behind his state-champion sprinter's speed and bulldog toughness.
"In football, because I was big and fast, it was kind of silly," Geopfert says. "I think I averaged 26.0 yards per carry. I'd get mad when we'd cross the 50 because it hurt my rushing average."
But track was Geopfert's true love all along.
"I saw freaks a little older than me who'd fizzle out," Geopfert says. "From eighth grade on, I wouldn't let anybody outwork me. I got better and it remained that way until I was 29 years old. In track and field, I set a personal record in at least one event every year until I was 29."
The process began with the original Panora hometown hero, Kip Janvrin, who won the decathlon at the 1995 Pan Am Games, who was a three-time NCAA Division III decathlon champion, and who was in the midst of his record 17 decathlon wins at the Drake Relays.
"Kip was a little bit of a legend, so I didn't know him, but I knew of him, for sure," Geopfert says. "I was in the fifth grade, walked into the Panora Oil gas station, and Kip was in there buying something. I said, 'Holy cow! That's Kip Janvrin!' Then in the fifth grade, I long-jumped 14 feet, 3 inches to break our previous fifth grade record of 13 feet, 9 inches set 14 years before — by Kip Janvrin."
Janvrin won the 2001 USA Track and Field Championship in the decathlon, became the American record holder with 26 decathlon wins over 8,000 points, broke an American record by winning 41 decathlons, and he represented Team USA at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
One day, young Geopfert finally mustered the courage to talk to Janvrin, whose father, Ken, served as Panora High School track and field coach. For three summers, Geopfert visited Janvrin 10 days at a time in Warrensburg, Missouri, to study his training for the decathlon.
"He was just a go-getter," Janvrin says. "He was super-aggressive with how he did things, didn't want anybody to beat him, and sometimes to a fault. He wanted to beat people so bad he'd run as hard as he could. I don't care if we're playing basketball, he wants to win. That's the trait of a person who's going to be very successful."
In Geopfert's senior year at Panora High School, everyone signed up for a senior trip to visit Europe — except for one student. Geopfert didn't go.
"Everyone wanted to see the world," he says. "I knew I didn't need to go on the trip. I'd never been out of the country before, but I knew I was going to see the world, anyway."
Geopfert's talents led to a football/track scholarship in college. By then, Janvrin served as the co-head track and field coach at Central Missouri, and he recruited Geopfert to join him in Warrensburg. But Central Missouri head football coach Willie Fritz deemed Geopfert too slow for the football team. Northern Iowa recruited Geopfert and head football coach Terry Allen welcomed Geopfert to the Panthers.
However, after Geopfert's freshman season, coaches wanted him to put on 40 pounds and become an outside linebacker. Geopfert politely declined and moved full-time to track and field, where he captured Missouri Valley Conference Championships in the decathlon, 4x100-meter relay, indoor distance medley relay, and was named a 2000 NCAA Indoor All-American. After his graduation from Northern Iowa in 2002, Geopfert won the Drake Relay decathlon in 2004 and 2006, became a five-time qualifier at the USATF Indoor and Outdoor Championships, and became a 2004 Olympic Trials qualifier.
In the midst of Geopfert's individual track conquests, he felt a calling: Coaching.
"He didn't have to tell me he was going to be a coach because I knew he was going to be a coach," Gary Geopfert says. "One of his high school football coaches told me, 'I'm either going to see Travis on Sundays or I'm going to see him in the Olympics.' Travis was just that driven. Everybody in our community knew he was that driven. He was just that guy. He was the guy everybody focused on.
"You knew he was going to make something happen."
It began with Kip Janvrin, who was in his sixth season as co-head track and field coach at Central Missouri when he brought Geopfert onto his staff as a graduate assistant in 2002. Janvrin went on to complete a legendary 36-year career at Central Missouri, including 28 years career as co-head track and field coach, until his retirement in 2024. In his career, Janvrin saw 26 national champions win 49 titles. His men's teams won 28 MIAA titles and his women's teams won nine under Janvrin's leadership with Kirk Pedersen.
"Travis and I stayed in touch while he was in college, and I watched his progress. When I had an opportunity to hire him as a graduate assistant at Central Missouri, it was a no-brainer," Janvrin says. "He was only there one year because he had an opportunity to get a full-time job at Northern Iowa, but I reaped the benefits of his recruiting for five years. The number of kids and talent he was able to bring to Central Missouri in one season of recruiting was amazing. You're seeing the same thing at K-State right now."
Enter Chris Bucknam. Bucknam, who was Northern Iowa's head men's track and field coach from 1984-2008 and women's coach from 1997-2008, won conference coach of the year honors 33 times, produced three national championships and 34 All-Americans that won a total of 85 All-America awards. Seven athletes earned top-three finishes in the NCAA Championships, including three in 2008 alone. Over Bucknam's era, Northern Iowa dominated track and field in the state, faring better than the University of Iowa and Iowa State.
Bucknam hired Geopfert to his first full-time job as Northern Iowa assistant coach in 2003. Geopfert served as recruiting coordinator, coached all the field events for the men's and women's teams, coached all the jumps, multis and throws, and Geopfert was finishing graduate school, training for a decathlon and had recently married his wife, Nicole.
"I still don't know," Geopfert says, "how we pulled that off."
Geopfert served as assistant coach until he was promoted to head coach after Bucknam accepted the head track and field position at Arkansas in 2008.
In 2009, Geopfert followed Bucknam to Arkansas as assistant coach — a position he served from 2009-18 before serving as associate head coach at Tennessee in 2018-21. Geopfert returned to Arkansas as associate head coach from 2021-24.
Four times Geopfert was named National Assistant Coach of the Year. He was a part of two NCAA Indoor Championship teams in 2013 and 2023. He helped Arkansas to 21 top-10 NCAA team finishes and 25 SEC Championships.
"He's the ultimate competitor," Bucknam says. "From the first day we met him out of high school all the way to today, I mean, nothing has changed one single bit."
Except things changed in July 2024.
Geopfert moved from Fayetteville to Manhattan to embark upon a journey as the Wildcats' captain.
"Travis always had that edge to be his own boss," says Bucknam, who retired from Arkansas on December 31, 2025. "Travis was ready to jump in, take over a program like Kansas State, and turn it around. I was like, 'Hey, son, go do your thing.'"
Geopfert had a tall task of replacing a legend, as Cliff Rovelto retired at the end of the 2024 outdoor season after 36 seasons at K-State, including 32 seasons as K-State Director of Cross Country and Track and Field. Rovelto guided K-State to five Big 12 Championships with the latest coming in 2018. His teams earned 10 top-10 finishes in the NCAA Championships, including a fifth-place finish at the 2002 NCAA Women's Outdoor Championships. He coached 17 NCAA Champions as K-State earned the title "HighJumpU,' by claiming 12 individual NCAA Championships with Scott Sellers, Erik Kynard and Tejaswin Shankar leading the way along with Percell Gaskins, Nathan Leeper, Akela Jones and Kim Williamson. Rovelto also coached 222 All-Americans and 17 individuals who represented their countries at the Olympics 22 times with Kynard (2012) winning a gold medal.
"When I accepted the K-State job, I said to my wife, 'I'm glutton for punishment,'" Geopfert says. "I followed legendary jump coach in Dick Booth at Arkansas and following him was crazy and the pressure I felt was insane. I told Nicole, 'Here we go again, following a legend.' When you have stress or pressure, you have to focus on the process. It can't be anything else. You can't succumb to any other external thoughts, pressures or expectations. There's nothing else except for the task at hand. I learned that back in 2009 and 2010 when dealing with crazy pressure. When I took that job at Arkansas as an assistant coach from Northern Iowa, it was about three weeks in and I was like, 'Holy cow. This is different. I have to figure this out fast. This is another level.'
"There was nothing except the process. You can't replace a legend. All I can do is focus on this process and these kids and do the very best job I can. Coach Rovelto is one of the most brilliant minds in our sport and what he's done, specifically with high jumpers, and with his longevity. So much of the success we're having now is built upon the foundation of the previous coaches and athletes. There's a history at K-State that's the foundation of this program. That's largely due to Coach Rovelto. I can't replace him. I'm not going to coach for another 30 years. My longevity at K-State isn't going to replace him. I'm not trying to replace Coach Rovelto. I'm trying to focus on the process and do the very best job we possibly can for this program. I can't replace that guy, you know?"
Geopfert called Janvrin, who retired from Central Missouri after the 2024 season.
"Travis reached out to me and asked some questions about K-State," Janvrin says. "I'd been over to Manhattan a few times and trained with Steve Fritz a little bit back in the early 1990s, and then came back in the early 2000s when Tom Pappas was training at K-State. I'd been around Cliff Rovelto and the facilities.
"Travis said, 'Would you come coach with me?' I retired at Central Missouri and then came here. When you're at one school for 36 years and have a house that you love and everything you want, you never anticipate leaving."
But Janvrin packed up to join his friend on an adventure. Geopfert hired Janvrin as assistant coach for multis and pole vault.
"Leaving was a very tough decision for me, but when you sit down and talk to Travis, when you hear his vision and his goals and what he wants to accomplish, you just want to be a part of it," Janvrin says. "He got me excited and he's rejuvenated me as a coach. He has made me better."
Travis talked to his father about his plans in Manhattan.
"I asked him who he was going to pick as his assistant coaches," Gary Geopfert says. "He told me years ago he was going to pick this guy, this guy and this guy. He knew all the big-time people. He knew all the players. And he pulled all these people together. And they all had the same mindset. And the same goals. Their goal is to win the national championship and for the kids to graduate and succeed as human beings. That's very important to him, for them to succeed in life.
"All those kids that he's had over the years that he's coached over the years, I don't think there's hardly any of them that he doesn't talk to on a basis. And they call him. He was the ordained minister for one of his kids, and he's stood up for a lot of kids at their weddings. That's how much they think of him."
Geopfert put together an all-star coaching staff with John Newell (associate head coach and throws), Kate Bucknam (distance), Mat Clark (sprints, strength and conditioning), Janvrin (multis/pole vault), Clive Pullen (jumps), Trey Brokaw (middle distance and recruiting coordinator), Stephanie Brokaw (middle distance), James Milholen (assistant), Christopher Goodwin (director of operations) and Tara Davis-Woodhall, perhaps the most well-known of the staff as she became a national sensation after winning the gold medal in the long jump at the 2024 Paris Olympics. She also won the 2024 World Indoor Championship, the 2025 World Athletics Championships, and the Athlos event in Times Square in New York City on October 10, 2025. Her coach? Travis Geopfert.
Geopfert was prophetic that day at Panora High School when he declined to attend the senior school trip to Europe. Geopfert has seen the world. He has visited nearly every continent. Long flights, little sleep, short hotel stays.
The K-State coaching staff has helped coach numerous national champions, team championships and All-Americans at different stops during their careers. Three assistant coaches also competed in the Olympics, as Pullen represented Jamaica in the 2016 Rio Olympics, Janvrin represented the United States in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and Davis-Woodhall represented the United States in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
"I was very confident in my interview with athletic director Gene Taylor at K-State, and I said, 'You allow me to hire this staff, and you're going to have one hell of a track team,'" Geopfert says. "I said it exactly like that, and I believed that. In my mind, we were going to be really, really good. Nobody knows us here. It's one thing to say it and another thing to do it. I told our staff, 'We have to go do it. There has to be some proof in the pudding until we gain much more traction on some things. We know we can do it. Let's go do it.'"
Today, Geopfert thinks back to the day of his introductory news conference as K-State head coach 19 months ago. In the beginning, in his first year, K-State put together 100 official visits, offered more than 70 prospective student-athletes and assembled a 56-member signing class. K-State also produced two First Team All-Americans and four Second Team All-Americans. K-State men's indoor team finished last and the men's outdoor team 11th in the Big 12 last season. K-State's women's indoor team finished eighth and the women's outdoor team finished 10th.
This was the ground floor. Now the Wildcats are cooking.
"Man, it's been a whirlwind, you know?" Geopfert says. "The recruiting in itself was an undertaking. As a staff, we talked about, 'We signed them, now we have to coach them.' The focus this year was way more honing in and pouring into these kids, and we've done a really good job of that this year. But it's not just the new recruits, it's also athletes we inherited who've really bought into the program and have improved. I want you to say this: This is not just me. This is an entire staff and support staff and administration that has an old-school work ethic and are aligned to the same goal. With all that, it's just been a whirlwind, man."
It's also been a turnaround, one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of the Big 12 Conference, regardless of sport, and certainly one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of K-State Athletics, as K-State in essence has gone from the worst team in the Big 12 one year to the No. 1 team in America the next.
"Last year, I saw the belief that Coach Geopfert has in us," says K-State senior Gary Moore Jr., who enters the National Indoor Championships ranked No. 5 in the weight throw. "Coach Geopfert is such an energetic guy and says all these big things and has these big goals for us. You look back last year, and we were last in the Big 12 Championship, the worst team in the conference, and nobody thought about K-State.
"You know what? We laid a foundation and now this year you see this turnaround, and it's insane. You can't tell me that K-State is going from last in the conference to being No. 1 nationally and being in the top 5 consistently each week. That's absurd. It's awesome to see. Coach Geopfert isn't just talking. Now we have the numbers to prove it. You look at the numbers, and we have a chance to bring the first-ever national championship to K-State."
The key? Consistency and focusing on the process.
Geopfert saw the K-State men's team's No. 1 ranking coming months before the official poll came to fruition that fateful day on February 3. He was pleased. But now came the test: Could K-State sustain its spot among the best teams in the nation?
"In October, I said to our staff, 'Hey, we're going to be ranked No. 1 at some point in the indoor season. I'm telling you. It's probably going to be after the last week of January. I'm not going to say we're winning a national title, but I'm telling you all, we're going to be in the mix, and at some point, we're going to be ranked No. 1. You watch.'" Geopfert says. "Then that happened. And here we are, and we're in the mix."
About 99% of the time, the National Coach of the Year honor is given to the head coach of the team that captures the National Championship title.
Moore Jr., would like to make an exception.
"Of course, Coach Goepfert should be national coach of the year," Moore Jr., says. "I don't think this turnaround has ever been seen. It's like Indiana football this year — going from nobody to winning the national title. We were in no conversations last year. Now we deserve to be in every conversation. That's because of Coach Geopfert."
Adds Bucknam: "It's been a phenomenal turnaround at K-State, and Travis is very worthy of the National Coach of the Year Award. He's the very best, at the top."
Exactly what are K-State fans and the NCAA track and field community seeing from the Wildcats this season?
"What you're seeing is some old-school work ethic from a staff, a support staff and a bunch of young kids who are willing to work hard," Geopfert says. "That's what you're seeing. There's no magic wand. There's nobody who's doing anything out of the ordinary other than being consistent and doing the simple things extraordinarily well all the time. That's with the staff, the support staff, coaching and going down there and grinding and pouring into these kids every day and they're buying in. That's what you're seeing. It's such a great team atmosphere."
And Geopfert fought, boy, did he fight at the end of the Big 12 Indoor Championships when K-State men's indoor team finished as runner-up to Texas Tech — by a single point (125 to 124) — giving the Red Raiders the Big 12 title at their home arena, the Sports Performance Center in Lubbock, Texas.
"It was intense at the Big 12 Championships, and there was controversy and a few things that happened where I was like, 'All right, I'm taking my gloves off and fighting for these kids,'" Geopfert says. "And I did. I fought hard. Some of their fans told me what they thought of me. I was like, 'Holy cow, we're at a freaking track meet, and I'm getting told off by the opposing team's fans? We've arrived.' I thought, 'This is freaking great.'
"We are relevant. We are relevant. I appreciate that. I don't know if we're going to win the national title this week. Dude, we have a chance. But we're relevant with Arkansas, Oregon, Florida and Tennessee — all those teams that are up there. We're in the freaking mix, and you can't deny it."
An added layer to this possible made-for-movie feel-good story? In order to win the NCAA Indoor Championship on Friday and Saturday, Geopfert must do so at the Randal Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The very university and very town and very indoor facility where Geopfert spent years coaching some of the best athletes in the world becomes the battleground for K-State's quest to win it all.
"I'm not going to lie, it'd be pretty fun from multiple perspectives," Geopfert says. "We have a lot of friends in Fayetteville, and some of them are going to wear K-State gear to the meet. I'd love, love, love to flood that place with lavender and almost make it feel like a home track meet. K-State is different in terms of our fan base. I was at Arkansas for a long time and the track fans are knowledgeable and they're going to support the Hogs, but in a very short period, the K-State support that's risen for track and field is amazing to me. There are people supporting this program that didn't follow track before. It's something I've never seen.
"More than anything, I'd love to see K-State fans down there to make it feel as much like a home track meet as possible. Our whole team is going down. We're going to have 80 kids down there. It's not so much going to Arkansas to prove anything, but rather it's trying to win for K-State. If we can pull it off, it transcends track and field and we all know it. We have to focus on the process of competing and doing it, but this isn't about anything other than trying to win it for K-State. That's all it's about."
K-State has never won a national championship — in any sport. It's been well-documented for decades now, a popular topic for opposing Big 12 fans, with the dark cloud casting a mysterious shadow inside an empty trophy case. That could soon change. And Geopfert can feel it.
"I have goosebumps right now," Geopfert says. "I don't know what the feeling of winning a national championship would be like. I don't take it lightly. Winning a NCAA title is so hard to do – incredibly hard to do in any sport – but to have a shot at a national title is an incredible opportunity for all of us. This isn't a one-hit wonder. We have a team that's just at the beginning of this.
"There are things to put into order to make this program even better. There are things we can improve upon here. It's not like all the marbles are on this thing. We're going to focus on the process and try to compete for the national title, and if we don't get it, we're going to improve and try to compete for a title the next opportunity."
That next opportunity? The outdoor track and field season, which fires up at the Stanford Invitational (April 3-4), then the Oregon Team Invitational (April 17-18) and the Drake Relays (April 23-25) before the Ward Haylett Invitational (May 8). The Big 12 Outdoor Championships (May 14-16) will be at Drachman Stadium in Tucson, Arizona.
"We have some major bullets," Geopfert says. "We have significant players who can score high points, and as we continue this outdoor season and moving into next year, we have to put a few more bullets in the gun. We'll focus on that going into next year. Our indoor and outdoor team is very similar. For the most part, it's the same people. On the men's side, we lose Kade McCall (Big 12 Champion in the weight throw), he doesn't have any eligibility remaining in the hammer, but we pick up Riley Marx in the javelin, and we pick up Ricardo Hayles, and he's a 60-meter discus thrower. We pick up a couple 400-meter hurdlers who are pretty good. On the women's side, we pick up a slew of 400-meter hurdlers who are very, very good. We're going to have a very similar team. Next year, we have two women and two men who are NCAA-caliber athletes that we're redshirting right now. More bullets that we'll have.
"As we continue to move forward in the program, we're in a good spot for the future."
The hunt for individual Big 12 Champions, individual national champions and Olympians continues, as Geopfert and his coaching staff seek more "bullets" to help further enhance the track and field program at K-State.
"You look at my flight map, and I've seen the world," Geopfert says. "It's stadiums, hotels and long flights. I've seen the world. What's fun for me is I want this coaching staff to have these opportunities that I've had to coach elite athletes in the world because there are coaches on this staff that are better and smarter than me. When my career is finished, these guys are going to keep it rolling in a lot of ways. I have a long time left in my career, don't get me wrong, but this staff is special."
As are these K-State men's and women's indoor track and field teams this season.
And it started with the vision of a man choosing between two dress shirts — one plain lavender, and one lavender and white — in a conference room before his introductory news conference at the Vanier Family Football Complex on July 15, 2024. The man is smiling. The man is talking about big plans. He says that he doesn't want to keep K-State track and field a secret anymore. He says that he wants the world to know about K-State track and field.
Back home in Panora, Iowa, Gary Geopfert retraces the journey — from the elementary school dominance to the college dominance, to the coaching stints, and the national titles, and searching the world for top athletes — to where the son steps in front of K-State Nation and officially begins to lay the foundation in Manhattan. Then the father reflects on this past year, the second year of the son's journey, which features one of the greatest turnarounds the Big 12 and K-State have ever seen.
Think about it.
K-State has a chance to bring the first national championship in K-State history back to Manhattan this weekend.
This started with one man's vision. Nineteen months ago.
It's enough to give the father pause.
"I always knew Travis was going to be something special," Gary Geopfert says. "I knew it when he was 4 years old. I just always knew he was going to go places. He was more than ready for this position at K-State. I'm a super-proud dad. Hopefully, we get that national championship. If not this year, they're going to have some great things happen. There are a lot of athletes who are going to want to come to K-State."
He pauses.
"They're putting K-State track and field on the map," he says. "Things are falling into place."
Travis Geopfert sits in the conference room at the Vanier Family Football Complex wearing a black polo shirt. It's 9:52 a.m. on July 15, 2024. In about an hour, he will be formally introduced as the seventh full-time Director of Track and Field/Cross Country in Kansas State history. He is picking between two dress shirts — one plain lavender, and one lavender and white. He goes with the plain lavender to go along with his off-white suit for the news conference.
He's already making important decisions.
Before he enters the Steel & Pipe Team Theatre, where he will be introduced by K-State Director of Athletics Gene Taylor, Geopfert sits down at the clear glass table inside the conference room. He crackles with energy. He talks about the weather, he talks about travel, and he talks about plans as he buttons up his plain lavender dress shirt. He cannot stop smiling. The 45-year-old Geopfert carries 22 years of coaching experience, including 12 at Arkansas. A native of Panora, Iowa, Geopfert was 2002 graduate of Northern Iowa, and an All-American who set multiple track records, and he has competed in 54 decathlons. He was an assistant coach on two NCAA Championship teams and earned USTFCCCA National Assistant of the Year awards following the 2013, 2014 and 2023 men's indoor seasons at Arkansas, along with the 2023 men's outdoor season.
Besides his two NCAA team championships, Geopfert has been a part of 24 top-10 NCAA team finishes and 37 conference team championships at Central Missouri, Northern Iowa, Arkansas and Tennessee.
Already, he has big plans for the Wildcats.
"Kansas State to a little degree is a well-kept secret," he says inside the conference room. "I don't want to keep it a secret anymore. I want the world to know about Kansas State track and field."
And now we're here.
In 19 short months Geopfert and his coaching staff have K-State poised in the penthouse among the blue-blood programs in the NCAA.
On February 3, K-State men's indoor team rose to its first-ever No. 1 ranking in the USTFCCCA national poll after the second week of the season. Meanwhile, the K-State women's indoor team steadily climbed from a top-30 team to a top-20 team to where it sits today.
Today, K-State joins Arkansas, Oregon and Texas Tech as the only Division I programs with both its men's and women's indoor teams ranked in the top 10. K-State men are ranked No. 5 — the highest ranking by a Big 12 men's team — and the women are ranked No. 9, as a total of 16 K-State athletes prepare to compete in the NCAA Indoor Championship on Friday and Saturday at the Randal Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
K-State's nine men set to compete at the NCAA Indoor Championship are tied for the fifth most by participating teams (Arkansas leads with 17 qualifiers), and it's the most by a Big 12 program, and it's the largest pool of K-State men's qualifiers at a NCAA Indoor Championship in more than 20 years. The seven women qualifiers at K-State are the most since 2015.
The best finish by a K-State men's team in the NCAA Indoor Championship was fifth place in 1966. The best finish by the women was fifth place in 1984.
"I'm pumped, man," Geopfert says. "I'm excited to go to Fayetteville and compete. The kids are loose and ready to go. We have a chip on our shoulder, there's no doubt, and we're just going to get after it and see what we can do. We're in a good situation. There's no pressure except for what we put on ourselves. Our standards and expectations are high. We want these athletes to have fun and, dude, let's see if we can take down some of the blue bloods and do this thing. The women can finish top 10 and the men?
"The men could be in the mix for the national title."
Gary Geopfert and his former wife Theresa raised their sons Travis and Tyler in Panora, Iowa, a town of about 1,200 residents located along the Middle Raccoon River, and about 50 miles west of Des Moines. The Geopfert's have lived on the same farmland for 46 years. Gary, 68, has been a building contractor for nearly five decades. At age 9, Gary attended his first Drake Relays in 1967 with his mother and stepfather. Gary ran the 100 meters and 200 meters in high school and has always been an avid follower of track and field. His hobby these days? He follows the track and field exploits of his boys and his grandchildren.
"Travis and I went to an indoor multi-event competition in Manhattan back around 2000 or 2001, and that was the only time I'd ever been to Manhattan until Travis took the job," Gary says. "Back then they competed in the fieldhouse, so it was a little different than now."
Travis and Tyler grew up playing all the major sports in the small Iowa town — football, baseball, basketball and track. Travis broke all the track records at Panorama Elementary School, then he competed in his first decathlon at age 14, and then he emerged as a star halfback and middle linebacker — a Panora High School starting freshman becoming a hometown hero behind his state-champion sprinter's speed and bulldog toughness.
"In football, because I was big and fast, it was kind of silly," Geopfert says. "I think I averaged 26.0 yards per carry. I'd get mad when we'd cross the 50 because it hurt my rushing average."
But track was Geopfert's true love all along.
"I saw freaks a little older than me who'd fizzle out," Geopfert says. "From eighth grade on, I wouldn't let anybody outwork me. I got better and it remained that way until I was 29 years old. In track and field, I set a personal record in at least one event every year until I was 29."
The process began with the original Panora hometown hero, Kip Janvrin, who won the decathlon at the 1995 Pan Am Games, who was a three-time NCAA Division III decathlon champion, and who was in the midst of his record 17 decathlon wins at the Drake Relays.
"Kip was a little bit of a legend, so I didn't know him, but I knew of him, for sure," Geopfert says. "I was in the fifth grade, walked into the Panora Oil gas station, and Kip was in there buying something. I said, 'Holy cow! That's Kip Janvrin!' Then in the fifth grade, I long-jumped 14 feet, 3 inches to break our previous fifth grade record of 13 feet, 9 inches set 14 years before — by Kip Janvrin."
Janvrin won the 2001 USA Track and Field Championship in the decathlon, became the American record holder with 26 decathlon wins over 8,000 points, broke an American record by winning 41 decathlons, and he represented Team USA at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
One day, young Geopfert finally mustered the courage to talk to Janvrin, whose father, Ken, served as Panora High School track and field coach. For three summers, Geopfert visited Janvrin 10 days at a time in Warrensburg, Missouri, to study his training for the decathlon.
"He was just a go-getter," Janvrin says. "He was super-aggressive with how he did things, didn't want anybody to beat him, and sometimes to a fault. He wanted to beat people so bad he'd run as hard as he could. I don't care if we're playing basketball, he wants to win. That's the trait of a person who's going to be very successful."
In Geopfert's senior year at Panora High School, everyone signed up for a senior trip to visit Europe — except for one student. Geopfert didn't go.
"Everyone wanted to see the world," he says. "I knew I didn't need to go on the trip. I'd never been out of the country before, but I knew I was going to see the world, anyway."
Geopfert's talents led to a football/track scholarship in college. By then, Janvrin served as the co-head track and field coach at Central Missouri, and he recruited Geopfert to join him in Warrensburg. But Central Missouri head football coach Willie Fritz deemed Geopfert too slow for the football team. Northern Iowa recruited Geopfert and head football coach Terry Allen welcomed Geopfert to the Panthers.
However, after Geopfert's freshman season, coaches wanted him to put on 40 pounds and become an outside linebacker. Geopfert politely declined and moved full-time to track and field, where he captured Missouri Valley Conference Championships in the decathlon, 4x100-meter relay, indoor distance medley relay, and was named a 2000 NCAA Indoor All-American. After his graduation from Northern Iowa in 2002, Geopfert won the Drake Relay decathlon in 2004 and 2006, became a five-time qualifier at the USATF Indoor and Outdoor Championships, and became a 2004 Olympic Trials qualifier.
In the midst of Geopfert's individual track conquests, he felt a calling: Coaching.
"He didn't have to tell me he was going to be a coach because I knew he was going to be a coach," Gary Geopfert says. "One of his high school football coaches told me, 'I'm either going to see Travis on Sundays or I'm going to see him in the Olympics.' Travis was just that driven. Everybody in our community knew he was that driven. He was just that guy. He was the guy everybody focused on.
"You knew he was going to make something happen."
It began with Kip Janvrin, who was in his sixth season as co-head track and field coach at Central Missouri when he brought Geopfert onto his staff as a graduate assistant in 2002. Janvrin went on to complete a legendary 36-year career at Central Missouri, including 28 years career as co-head track and field coach, until his retirement in 2024. In his career, Janvrin saw 26 national champions win 49 titles. His men's teams won 28 MIAA titles and his women's teams won nine under Janvrin's leadership with Kirk Pedersen.
"Travis and I stayed in touch while he was in college, and I watched his progress. When I had an opportunity to hire him as a graduate assistant at Central Missouri, it was a no-brainer," Janvrin says. "He was only there one year because he had an opportunity to get a full-time job at Northern Iowa, but I reaped the benefits of his recruiting for five years. The number of kids and talent he was able to bring to Central Missouri in one season of recruiting was amazing. You're seeing the same thing at K-State right now."
Enter Chris Bucknam. Bucknam, who was Northern Iowa's head men's track and field coach from 1984-2008 and women's coach from 1997-2008, won conference coach of the year honors 33 times, produced three national championships and 34 All-Americans that won a total of 85 All-America awards. Seven athletes earned top-three finishes in the NCAA Championships, including three in 2008 alone. Over Bucknam's era, Northern Iowa dominated track and field in the state, faring better than the University of Iowa and Iowa State.
Bucknam hired Geopfert to his first full-time job as Northern Iowa assistant coach in 2003. Geopfert served as recruiting coordinator, coached all the field events for the men's and women's teams, coached all the jumps, multis and throws, and Geopfert was finishing graduate school, training for a decathlon and had recently married his wife, Nicole.
"I still don't know," Geopfert says, "how we pulled that off."
Geopfert served as assistant coach until he was promoted to head coach after Bucknam accepted the head track and field position at Arkansas in 2008.
In 2009, Geopfert followed Bucknam to Arkansas as assistant coach — a position he served from 2009-18 before serving as associate head coach at Tennessee in 2018-21. Geopfert returned to Arkansas as associate head coach from 2021-24.
Four times Geopfert was named National Assistant Coach of the Year. He was a part of two NCAA Indoor Championship teams in 2013 and 2023. He helped Arkansas to 21 top-10 NCAA team finishes and 25 SEC Championships.
"He's the ultimate competitor," Bucknam says. "From the first day we met him out of high school all the way to today, I mean, nothing has changed one single bit."
Except things changed in July 2024.
Geopfert moved from Fayetteville to Manhattan to embark upon a journey as the Wildcats' captain.
"Travis always had that edge to be his own boss," says Bucknam, who retired from Arkansas on December 31, 2025. "Travis was ready to jump in, take over a program like Kansas State, and turn it around. I was like, 'Hey, son, go do your thing.'"
Geopfert had a tall task of replacing a legend, as Cliff Rovelto retired at the end of the 2024 outdoor season after 36 seasons at K-State, including 32 seasons as K-State Director of Cross Country and Track and Field. Rovelto guided K-State to five Big 12 Championships with the latest coming in 2018. His teams earned 10 top-10 finishes in the NCAA Championships, including a fifth-place finish at the 2002 NCAA Women's Outdoor Championships. He coached 17 NCAA Champions as K-State earned the title "HighJumpU,' by claiming 12 individual NCAA Championships with Scott Sellers, Erik Kynard and Tejaswin Shankar leading the way along with Percell Gaskins, Nathan Leeper, Akela Jones and Kim Williamson. Rovelto also coached 222 All-Americans and 17 individuals who represented their countries at the Olympics 22 times with Kynard (2012) winning a gold medal.
"When I accepted the K-State job, I said to my wife, 'I'm glutton for punishment,'" Geopfert says. "I followed legendary jump coach in Dick Booth at Arkansas and following him was crazy and the pressure I felt was insane. I told Nicole, 'Here we go again, following a legend.' When you have stress or pressure, you have to focus on the process. It can't be anything else. You can't succumb to any other external thoughts, pressures or expectations. There's nothing else except for the task at hand. I learned that back in 2009 and 2010 when dealing with crazy pressure. When I took that job at Arkansas as an assistant coach from Northern Iowa, it was about three weeks in and I was like, 'Holy cow. This is different. I have to figure this out fast. This is another level.'
"There was nothing except the process. You can't replace a legend. All I can do is focus on this process and these kids and do the very best job I can. Coach Rovelto is one of the most brilliant minds in our sport and what he's done, specifically with high jumpers, and with his longevity. So much of the success we're having now is built upon the foundation of the previous coaches and athletes. There's a history at K-State that's the foundation of this program. That's largely due to Coach Rovelto. I can't replace him. I'm not going to coach for another 30 years. My longevity at K-State isn't going to replace him. I'm not trying to replace Coach Rovelto. I'm trying to focus on the process and do the very best job we possibly can for this program. I can't replace that guy, you know?"
Geopfert called Janvrin, who retired from Central Missouri after the 2024 season.
"Travis reached out to me and asked some questions about K-State," Janvrin says. "I'd been over to Manhattan a few times and trained with Steve Fritz a little bit back in the early 1990s, and then came back in the early 2000s when Tom Pappas was training at K-State. I'd been around Cliff Rovelto and the facilities.
"Travis said, 'Would you come coach with me?' I retired at Central Missouri and then came here. When you're at one school for 36 years and have a house that you love and everything you want, you never anticipate leaving."
But Janvrin packed up to join his friend on an adventure. Geopfert hired Janvrin as assistant coach for multis and pole vault.
"Leaving was a very tough decision for me, but when you sit down and talk to Travis, when you hear his vision and his goals and what he wants to accomplish, you just want to be a part of it," Janvrin says. "He got me excited and he's rejuvenated me as a coach. He has made me better."
Travis talked to his father about his plans in Manhattan.
"I asked him who he was going to pick as his assistant coaches," Gary Geopfert says. "He told me years ago he was going to pick this guy, this guy and this guy. He knew all the big-time people. He knew all the players. And he pulled all these people together. And they all had the same mindset. And the same goals. Their goal is to win the national championship and for the kids to graduate and succeed as human beings. That's very important to him, for them to succeed in life.
"All those kids that he's had over the years that he's coached over the years, I don't think there's hardly any of them that he doesn't talk to on a basis. And they call him. He was the ordained minister for one of his kids, and he's stood up for a lot of kids at their weddings. That's how much they think of him."
Geopfert put together an all-star coaching staff with John Newell (associate head coach and throws), Kate Bucknam (distance), Mat Clark (sprints, strength and conditioning), Janvrin (multis/pole vault), Clive Pullen (jumps), Trey Brokaw (middle distance and recruiting coordinator), Stephanie Brokaw (middle distance), James Milholen (assistant), Christopher Goodwin (director of operations) and Tara Davis-Woodhall, perhaps the most well-known of the staff as she became a national sensation after winning the gold medal in the long jump at the 2024 Paris Olympics. She also won the 2024 World Indoor Championship, the 2025 World Athletics Championships, and the Athlos event in Times Square in New York City on October 10, 2025. Her coach? Travis Geopfert.
Geopfert was prophetic that day at Panora High School when he declined to attend the senior school trip to Europe. Geopfert has seen the world. He has visited nearly every continent. Long flights, little sleep, short hotel stays.
The K-State coaching staff has helped coach numerous national champions, team championships and All-Americans at different stops during their careers. Three assistant coaches also competed in the Olympics, as Pullen represented Jamaica in the 2016 Rio Olympics, Janvrin represented the United States in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and Davis-Woodhall represented the United States in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
"I was very confident in my interview with athletic director Gene Taylor at K-State, and I said, 'You allow me to hire this staff, and you're going to have one hell of a track team,'" Geopfert says. "I said it exactly like that, and I believed that. In my mind, we were going to be really, really good. Nobody knows us here. It's one thing to say it and another thing to do it. I told our staff, 'We have to go do it. There has to be some proof in the pudding until we gain much more traction on some things. We know we can do it. Let's go do it.'"
Today, Geopfert thinks back to the day of his introductory news conference as K-State head coach 19 months ago. In the beginning, in his first year, K-State put together 100 official visits, offered more than 70 prospective student-athletes and assembled a 56-member signing class. K-State also produced two First Team All-Americans and four Second Team All-Americans. K-State men's indoor team finished last and the men's outdoor team 11th in the Big 12 last season. K-State's women's indoor team finished eighth and the women's outdoor team finished 10th.
This was the ground floor. Now the Wildcats are cooking.
"Man, it's been a whirlwind, you know?" Geopfert says. "The recruiting in itself was an undertaking. As a staff, we talked about, 'We signed them, now we have to coach them.' The focus this year was way more honing in and pouring into these kids, and we've done a really good job of that this year. But it's not just the new recruits, it's also athletes we inherited who've really bought into the program and have improved. I want you to say this: This is not just me. This is an entire staff and support staff and administration that has an old-school work ethic and are aligned to the same goal. With all that, it's just been a whirlwind, man."
It's also been a turnaround, one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of the Big 12 Conference, regardless of sport, and certainly one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of K-State Athletics, as K-State in essence has gone from the worst team in the Big 12 one year to the No. 1 team in America the next.
"Last year, I saw the belief that Coach Geopfert has in us," says K-State senior Gary Moore Jr., who enters the National Indoor Championships ranked No. 5 in the weight throw. "Coach Geopfert is such an energetic guy and says all these big things and has these big goals for us. You look back last year, and we were last in the Big 12 Championship, the worst team in the conference, and nobody thought about K-State.
"You know what? We laid a foundation and now this year you see this turnaround, and it's insane. You can't tell me that K-State is going from last in the conference to being No. 1 nationally and being in the top 5 consistently each week. That's absurd. It's awesome to see. Coach Geopfert isn't just talking. Now we have the numbers to prove it. You look at the numbers, and we have a chance to bring the first-ever national championship to K-State."
The key? Consistency and focusing on the process.
Geopfert saw the K-State men's team's No. 1 ranking coming months before the official poll came to fruition that fateful day on February 3. He was pleased. But now came the test: Could K-State sustain its spot among the best teams in the nation?
"In October, I said to our staff, 'Hey, we're going to be ranked No. 1 at some point in the indoor season. I'm telling you. It's probably going to be after the last week of January. I'm not going to say we're winning a national title, but I'm telling you all, we're going to be in the mix, and at some point, we're going to be ranked No. 1. You watch.'" Geopfert says. "Then that happened. And here we are, and we're in the mix."
About 99% of the time, the National Coach of the Year honor is given to the head coach of the team that captures the National Championship title.
Moore Jr., would like to make an exception.
"Of course, Coach Goepfert should be national coach of the year," Moore Jr., says. "I don't think this turnaround has ever been seen. It's like Indiana football this year — going from nobody to winning the national title. We were in no conversations last year. Now we deserve to be in every conversation. That's because of Coach Geopfert."
Adds Bucknam: "It's been a phenomenal turnaround at K-State, and Travis is very worthy of the National Coach of the Year Award. He's the very best, at the top."
Exactly what are K-State fans and the NCAA track and field community seeing from the Wildcats this season?
"What you're seeing is some old-school work ethic from a staff, a support staff and a bunch of young kids who are willing to work hard," Geopfert says. "That's what you're seeing. There's no magic wand. There's nobody who's doing anything out of the ordinary other than being consistent and doing the simple things extraordinarily well all the time. That's with the staff, the support staff, coaching and going down there and grinding and pouring into these kids every day and they're buying in. That's what you're seeing. It's such a great team atmosphere."
And Geopfert fought, boy, did he fight at the end of the Big 12 Indoor Championships when K-State men's indoor team finished as runner-up to Texas Tech — by a single point (125 to 124) — giving the Red Raiders the Big 12 title at their home arena, the Sports Performance Center in Lubbock, Texas.
"It was intense at the Big 12 Championships, and there was controversy and a few things that happened where I was like, 'All right, I'm taking my gloves off and fighting for these kids,'" Geopfert says. "And I did. I fought hard. Some of their fans told me what they thought of me. I was like, 'Holy cow, we're at a freaking track meet, and I'm getting told off by the opposing team's fans? We've arrived.' I thought, 'This is freaking great.'
"We are relevant. We are relevant. I appreciate that. I don't know if we're going to win the national title this week. Dude, we have a chance. But we're relevant with Arkansas, Oregon, Florida and Tennessee — all those teams that are up there. We're in the freaking mix, and you can't deny it."
An added layer to this possible made-for-movie feel-good story? In order to win the NCAA Indoor Championship on Friday and Saturday, Geopfert must do so at the Randal Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The very university and very town and very indoor facility where Geopfert spent years coaching some of the best athletes in the world becomes the battleground for K-State's quest to win it all.
"I'm not going to lie, it'd be pretty fun from multiple perspectives," Geopfert says. "We have a lot of friends in Fayetteville, and some of them are going to wear K-State gear to the meet. I'd love, love, love to flood that place with lavender and almost make it feel like a home track meet. K-State is different in terms of our fan base. I was at Arkansas for a long time and the track fans are knowledgeable and they're going to support the Hogs, but in a very short period, the K-State support that's risen for track and field is amazing to me. There are people supporting this program that didn't follow track before. It's something I've never seen.
"More than anything, I'd love to see K-State fans down there to make it feel as much like a home track meet as possible. Our whole team is going down. We're going to have 80 kids down there. It's not so much going to Arkansas to prove anything, but rather it's trying to win for K-State. If we can pull it off, it transcends track and field and we all know it. We have to focus on the process of competing and doing it, but this isn't about anything other than trying to win it for K-State. That's all it's about."
K-State has never won a national championship — in any sport. It's been well-documented for decades now, a popular topic for opposing Big 12 fans, with the dark cloud casting a mysterious shadow inside an empty trophy case. That could soon change. And Geopfert can feel it.
"I have goosebumps right now," Geopfert says. "I don't know what the feeling of winning a national championship would be like. I don't take it lightly. Winning a NCAA title is so hard to do – incredibly hard to do in any sport – but to have a shot at a national title is an incredible opportunity for all of us. This isn't a one-hit wonder. We have a team that's just at the beginning of this.
"There are things to put into order to make this program even better. There are things we can improve upon here. It's not like all the marbles are on this thing. We're going to focus on the process and try to compete for the national title, and if we don't get it, we're going to improve and try to compete for a title the next opportunity."
That next opportunity? The outdoor track and field season, which fires up at the Stanford Invitational (April 3-4), then the Oregon Team Invitational (April 17-18) and the Drake Relays (April 23-25) before the Ward Haylett Invitational (May 8). The Big 12 Outdoor Championships (May 14-16) will be at Drachman Stadium in Tucson, Arizona.
"We have some major bullets," Geopfert says. "We have significant players who can score high points, and as we continue this outdoor season and moving into next year, we have to put a few more bullets in the gun. We'll focus on that going into next year. Our indoor and outdoor team is very similar. For the most part, it's the same people. On the men's side, we lose Kade McCall (Big 12 Champion in the weight throw), he doesn't have any eligibility remaining in the hammer, but we pick up Riley Marx in the javelin, and we pick up Ricardo Hayles, and he's a 60-meter discus thrower. We pick up a couple 400-meter hurdlers who are pretty good. On the women's side, we pick up a slew of 400-meter hurdlers who are very, very good. We're going to have a very similar team. Next year, we have two women and two men who are NCAA-caliber athletes that we're redshirting right now. More bullets that we'll have.
"As we continue to move forward in the program, we're in a good spot for the future."
The hunt for individual Big 12 Champions, individual national champions and Olympians continues, as Geopfert and his coaching staff seek more "bullets" to help further enhance the track and field program at K-State.
"You look at my flight map, and I've seen the world," Geopfert says. "It's stadiums, hotels and long flights. I've seen the world. What's fun for me is I want this coaching staff to have these opportunities that I've had to coach elite athletes in the world because there are coaches on this staff that are better and smarter than me. When my career is finished, these guys are going to keep it rolling in a lot of ways. I have a long time left in my career, don't get me wrong, but this staff is special."
As are these K-State men's and women's indoor track and field teams this season.
And it started with the vision of a man choosing between two dress shirts — one plain lavender, and one lavender and white — in a conference room before his introductory news conference at the Vanier Family Football Complex on July 15, 2024. The man is smiling. The man is talking about big plans. He says that he doesn't want to keep K-State track and field a secret anymore. He says that he wants the world to know about K-State track and field.
Back home in Panora, Iowa, Gary Geopfert retraces the journey — from the elementary school dominance to the college dominance, to the coaching stints, and the national titles, and searching the world for top athletes — to where the son steps in front of K-State Nation and officially begins to lay the foundation in Manhattan. Then the father reflects on this past year, the second year of the son's journey, which features one of the greatest turnarounds the Big 12 and K-State have ever seen.
Think about it.
K-State has a chance to bring the first national championship in K-State history back to Manhattan this weekend.
This started with one man's vision. Nineteen months ago.
It's enough to give the father pause.
"I always knew Travis was going to be something special," Gary Geopfert says. "I knew it when he was 4 years old. I just always knew he was going to go places. He was more than ready for this position at K-State. I'm a super-proud dad. Hopefully, we get that national championship. If not this year, they're going to have some great things happen. There are a lot of athletes who are going to want to come to K-State."
He pauses.
"They're putting K-State track and field on the map," he says. "Things are falling into place."
Players Mentioned
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