On his 75th mission, just five days before the end of his tour in 1967, Charlie Plumb was shot down over Hanoi, forcing him to eject and parachute into enemy territory, where he was taken prisoner, tortured, and spent the next 2,103 days in North Vietnamese Prisoner of War camps.
The man of the hour stands inside the third-level theater room at the Vanier Family Football Complex. He's been in the building for several hours now. Early-morning workouts cause him to reset the alarm clocks — because he just wants to evaluate how the current players are doing. Yes, 36-year-old Greg Svarczkopf doesn't miss a thing involving the current members of the Kansas State football team — even though his official role on the football staff is Director or Recruiting.
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 stands before us at the conclusion of the Kansas State Pro Day on the field at the indoor practice facility Tuesday afternoon wearing a black Nike cut-off t-shirt with a white "75" and a Powercat emblazoned upon the right side of his chest. His dark, curly hair stands at attention and drips with sweat across a face that shines wet and features a quarter-sized gash to the right of his eye. Sam Hecht stands in front of a TV camera and smiles wide at his surprise parting gift he received during drill work in front of NFL scouts — a gash, a souvenir, a badge of honor that one of the top center prospects for the 2026 NFL Draft had put in an honest day's work.
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