FAYETTEVILLE -- Fifty years after University of Arkansas men's track and field Coach Chris Bucknam graduated from Beverly (Mass.) High School in 1974, he'll be back home this weekend to lead the Razorbacks at the NCAA Indoor Championships.
Beverly is a suburb located 35 miles north of Boston, which will host the NCAA meet for the first time at The Track at New Balance World Headquarters.
Arkansas is the defending national indoor champion and ranked No. 1 going into the meet.
Bucknam, 67, laughed when asked if as a high school student he ever thought about the possibility of being the coach of a powerhouse college program and bringing his team to Boston to compete for an NCAA title.
"Not in a million years," Bucknam said. "I had no idea that something like this would happen.
"It's pretty cool, but it's just surreal to me. It's hard to even imagine that this came to fruition like it has now.
"It's Bizarro World -- in a good way."
Bucknam's parents, Paul and Beverly, live in Marblehead, Mass., about 18 miles north of Boston.
"My parents have made some long trips to watch the Razorbacks at the national meet at a bunch of different places," Bucknam said, mentioning Fayetteville, College Station, Texas, and Eugene, Ore., among the destinations. "It's great having the meet in Boston because it means they can watch us just down the road from their home.
"They're going to stay with us at the team hotel, so they'll be right in the mix with everything."
Bucknam's younger brother, Mark, lives in New Hampshire and is coming to the meet along with two nephews from New Jersey.
"The NCAA track meet is a two-day torture test," Bucknam said. "So it'll be good to have my parents and other family around."
Bucknam was born and raised in Beverly, and his favorite sport as a youngster was hockey, which he played on frozen ponds in the winter.
"Track was probably the furthest thing from my mind as a kid," he said.
Bucknam became interested in being a runner when he began attending Beverly High School, which had strong cross country and track and field programs under Coach Fred Hammond. Beverly even had an indoor track.
"Track was really big at Beverly and a lot of kids went out for the team, and we won a lot of meets and some state titles," Bucknam said. "Like any trackster, I wasn't big enough to do any other sports, but I had a lot of fun running cross country in the fall and track in the spring.
"I wasn't any great athlete, but I was good enough to score some points and be a part of the team."
Bucknam continued his running career at Norwich University, an NCAA Division III school in Northfield, Vt.
Norwich is a private military academy, and Bucknam entered the ROTC program and figured he'd have a career in the Army or possibly law enforcement.
But as a physical education major, Bucknam instead decided he wanted to coach.
"It was a small athletic department at Norwich where I got to know all the coaches, and that's where I first got the coaching bug," he said. "I wanted to be a college coach."
Bucknam's first coaching job was as a men's cross country and track and field assistant at Northern Iowa in 1979. He became the men's head coach in 1984, then added the women's coaching duties in 1997.
After leading Northern Iowa to a combined 35 conference titles -- first in the Mid-Continent, then in the Missouri Valley -- Bucknam became Arkansas' coach in 2008.
Since taking over for the legendary John McDonnell -- whose Razorbacks won 84 conference and 40 national championships in cross country and track and field -- Bucknam has led Arkansas to 31 SEC titles and two national championships along with 24 top-10 finishes.
After Arkansas won NCAA Indoor championships in 2013 in Fayetteville and last year in Albuquerque, N.M., under Bucknam's direction, the Razorbacks will be looking for another title where their coach grew up cheering for Boston's professional teams -- the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots and Red Sox.
Bucknam has brought a group of runners to smaller meets in Boston in recent years, including earlier this winter, but never a team until now.
The NCAA meet will begin today with the weight throw, then all the other events will be held Friday and Saturday. Arkansas has 15 entries to lead the men's teams.
"For sure it's special to come back home and have a team that's contending for a national title," Bucknam said. "I left a long time ago, but I had a great experience growing up in Beverly and coming to Boston to catch a Celtics or Red Sox game.
"I have a lot of great memories of my time there."
Bucknam is hoping the Razorbacks can help him create another great Boston memory this weekend.