FAYETTEVILLE — The number on the flag at John McDonnell Field increased again Thursday at a celebration of the Arkansas men’s track and field outdoor national championship that was clinched six days earlier in Oregon. 

The latest win was Arkansas’ 44th national championship recognized by the NCAA in men’s track and field and cross country. Outdoor titles won in 2004 and 2005 were vacated as part of NCAA sanctions against the program in 2009. 

When coupled with the nine national championships won by Arkansas’ women, the Razorbacks claim 53 national championships — hence the “53” flag that now flies high above Meadow Street. 

It was the second time in three months the white number was changed on the 10-foot tall by 15-foot wide red flag. The Razorbacks’ men won the NCAA indoor championship in March. 

“This is becoming a pretty frequent occurrence that we really enjoy,” Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek said in remarks to the assembled crowd. “It’s a great tradition for our track and field program.”

It was the fifth time the flag number was updated since a “47” flag was first raised earlier this decade. The men and women swept the 2023 NCAA indoor meet, and the women won national titles indoors and outdoors in 2024. 

“This flag idea was born out of the fact that when our athletes walk out of their locker rooms, they see what we’re about,” said Chris Bucknam, a two-time indoor national champion coach of the Arkansas men who retired in December. “This is what we strive for. It’s not to show off or anything else, but it’s a message to our men and women athletes. 

“It’s a perfect symbol of honoring the past and the incentive of, ‘Hey, now let’s put 54 up, and 55.’” 

For Yurachek, a dominant year in track and field validated his decision to elevate Doug Case, an 18-year Arkansas assistant, to the head coaching job when Bucknam retired. 

“I think it was an easy transition when Coach Buck said he was going to retire, to hand the baton over to Doug and let him take this,” Yurachek said. “We knew we had an opportunity to have a really successful year, but as a [new] head coach he still had to make sure he put all the pieces together, both in the indoor and the outdoor.

“He had a plan in place for this program to continue the tradition and the legacy that Coach [John] McDonnell started a long time ago, Coach Bucknam continued and now [Case] is stepping right into that. We hadn’t won an outdoor championship in 23 years, and so for him to be able to put the pieces to that puzzle together this year was amazing.” 

Case, 64, had previous head coaching experience at Drake in the late 1990s and had turned down multiple head coaching opportunities to remain an assistant at Arkansas. 

“He was probably more qualified for a head coaching position than any coach in any sport in the NCAA in 2025-26,” Bucknam said. “I knew it and Hunter was able to see it, thank goodness.” 

When Arkansas won the NCAA outdoor meet last Friday, Yurachek said his first call was to congratulate Case. His second call was to Bucknam, who oversaw the roster assembly and coached the team in practice for several months before the indoor season began. 

“He was very much a part of this,” Yurachek said. 

 Former Arkansas men’s track coach Chris Bucknam acknowledges the crowd during a flag raising ceremony Thursday, June 18, 2026, in Fayetteville. (Hank Layton/WholeHogSports)
 

Bucknam, who still lives in Fayetteville, attended Thursday’s ceremony and received a warm ovation when he was recognized during Yurachek’s remarks to the crowd. But he was quick to deflect credit to Case. 

“He did a masterful job to take over when he took over midstream,” Bucknam said. “I thought we did it the right way and the timing was perfect, but then somebody’s got to execute it, and Doug executed it. There were no guarantees that I would have been able to pull this off, but obviously I’m extremely proud. 

“I was close to the team — my name was probably on everybody’s scholarship papers — but it was Doug’s team and he did a masterful job of navigating the big four championships.” 

Arkansas went 4-0 at the SEC and NCAA indoor and outdoor meets. That had not happened since the 2005 season when the Razorbacks’ NCAA outdoor title was abdicated.

“It was just fun stepping back and watching something that you were part of, but watching the new generation kick ass like they did,” Bucknam said. 

Arkansas had an NCAA-best 21 entries into the outdoor meet, but the Razorbacks suffered a setback on Day 1 when multiple athletes failed to qualify in the 200 meters and 110 hurdles, including star sprinter Jelani Watkins. The two-sport athlete — Watkins is also a receiver on the Razorbacks’ football team — let up at the end of the 200 and failed to qualify for the finals. Watkins was projected to score points in the final, and perhaps win individual gold. 

“If you watched the meet, you saw it didn’t exactly go our way at the beginning,” Case said. “We were fighting tooth and nail the whole way. Nobody ever quit, nobody laid down, nobody thought we couldn’t do this thing.”

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 Arkansas men’s track and field coach Doug Case (left) and members of the Razorbacks’ outdoor team stand with SEC and NCAA trophies during a flag raising ceremony Thursday, June 18, 2026, in Fayetteville. (Hank Layton/WholeHogSports)
 

 

Arkansas scored 56 points and won comfortably without an individual or relay title. Georgia finished in second place with 49 points. 

“We had a great amount of depth on the team,” Case said Monday on the WholeHogSports Daily Podcast. “We were good from the 100 to the 10K. We just qualified so many people into the meet … that we had a little room for error.” 

An estimated 150 to 200 people were in attendance at Thursday’s flag raising, which began at 4 p.m. Bucknam called the workday turnout “great” and “super important” to show support for an Olympic sport.

“These wins couldn’t have come at a better time,” Bucknam said. “As Doug said, we’re just trying to do our part to make Arkansas proud of a program that is national and global. … We’re getting it done on all levels and it’s extremely important that people see the value of what we’re trying to do here.”

Arkansas students’ end-of-year test scores improved across grade levels and subject areas, state officials said Thurday, but most students still aren’t meeting performance targets.

Results from the Arkansas Teaching and Learning Assessment System exam, known as ATLAS, showed students’ overall proficiency rose from 36.9% in 2025 to 42.2% in 2026, according to an executive summary of the scores.

The number of students performing at the lowest level across all subjects declined from 27.3% in 2025 to 23.1% in 2026, according to the report.

This is only the third year that Arkansas has used the ATLAS test, limiting direct comparisons to years before 2024. State Education Secretary Jacob Oliva has said the state shifted to ATLAS from its previous end-of-year test, the ACT Aspire, to better align measurement of student performance with Arkansas’ academic standards.

“The 2026 ATLAS exam scores confirm what we’re hearing from educators across the Natural State: Arkansas LEARNS is working and students across Arkansas are doing better because of it,” Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a news release.

Sanders’ signature legislative package on education, the LEARNS Act, mandated the state move to a new student test and adopt a new grading system for schools and districts. The state offers grants for districts to administer high-impact tutoring, and students who struggle to read can also qualify for supplemental literacy tutoring.

Under LEARNS, third grade students who don’t read at grade level will be held back, though school districts also may give students good-cause exemptions from the requirement. Early numbers suggest that large numbers of third graders in some districts will be promoted to fourth grade even though they fell short of the literacy standards.

LEARNS also includes the Educational Freedom Account program, which significantly expanded state taxpayer funding of student tuition and other costs related to private schools and homeschooling. Over 44,000 students received an Educational Freedom Account in the 2025-26 school year, the first year participation was open to all K-12 students.

Participants in the school choice program are not required to take the ATLAS but still must take a national, norm-referenced test each year.

In the 2024-25 school year, Arkansas students showed slight increases in subject mastery overall, with the most notable increases in math and science.

The results come roughly a month after the release of the 2026 Education Scorecard, a cross-state analysis that says schools across the nation — including Arkansas — are in the midst of a “learning recession” that began in 2013. Math and reading performance declined over the past decade in most places, according to that report. Though the longer-term trend is downward nationally, the Education Scorecard says student performance has partly rebounded from the damage done by COVID-19.

As of 2024, Arkansas’ math and reading scores continued to lag national averages on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test often called the Nation’s Report Card.

Students who take ATLAS are classified into one of four performance levels, with level four being the highest. Level three indicates mastery of grade-level content, according to the report released Thursday. It describes each level as follows:

Level 4: Students demonstrate an advanced understanding of the knowledge and skills required of the grade-level standards. These students are on track for career and college, and demonstrate readiness for advanced and accelerated content at the next grade/course.

Level 3: Students demonstrate a proficient understanding of knowledge and skills and show mastery of grade-level standards. These students are on track for career and college, and demonstrate readiness for content at the next grade/course.

Level 2: Students demonstrate a basic understanding of knowledge and skills required of the grade-level standards and personalized support and intervention may be needed to access content taught in the next grade/course.

Level 1: Students demonstrate limited understanding of knowledge and skills required of the grade-level standards and will require significant support/scaffolding and intervention to access content taught at the next grade/course.

Check back for updates.

With support from the ADG Community Journalism Project, LEARNS reporter Josh Snyder covers the impact of the law on the K-12 education system across the state, and its effect on teachers, students, parents and communities. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette maintains full editorial control over this article and all other coverage. View all LEARNS Act coverage at arkansasonline.com/learns

LITTLE ROCK, AR (KATV) — A North Little Rock pathology lab and several of its current and former owners are paying $30 million to settle federal allegations that the company used unlawful kickbacks and ordered testing that wasn’t medically necessary.

Advanced Pathology Solutions PLLC, formerly known as Advanced Pathology Solutions LLC, and its management services organization, APS MSO LLC — together referred to as APS — agreed to the settlement with the United States. The agreement also includes current and former owners Kevin Hannah, Donell Burkett and Daniel Hunter Pledger.

“Healthcare referrals must be based on the best decision for patients, not the influence of kickbacks,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “This settlement demonstrates the Department’s commitment to hold accountable both corporations and individuals who profit from improper kickback arrangements and who burden federal healthcare programs with claims for medically unnecessary services.”

The settlement resolves allegations laid out in a federal complaint filed April 8 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. The United States alleged that from 2015 through July 2022, APS and its owners violated the False Claims Act by providing unlawful kickbacks to gastroenterology practices to induce referrals of pathology testing to APS, resulting in false claims to federal health care programs.

According to the complaint, APS and its owners developed a business model that involved setting up and managing limited-purpose laboratories — known as “lean labs” — inside gastroenterology practices nationwide. Those practices could bill for preparing and staining biopsy specimen slides, while the slides were then shipped to APS’s lab in North Little Rock for pathologist interpretation and review. Federal officials alleged that in exchange for various benefits furnished by APS, the gastroenterology practices agreed to exclusively refer their patients to APS, creating improper financial relationships that amounted to kickbacks.

“Fraud against the taxpayer is rampant and insidious and when discovered must be held accountable. Engineering kickbacks to result in unnecessary medical testing which is then paid for by the United States taxpayer is unacceptable and once discovered as with APS, will result in lengthy investigation and review, and ultimately a significant settlement amount as demonstrated by this settlement,” said U.S. Attorney Jonathan D. Ross for the Eastern District of Arkansas. “Our office will continue to work with Main Justice to detect and deter any similar schemes and then hold the wrongdoers accountable under the law.”

The United States also alleged APS and its owners submitted — and caused the submission of — claims to federal health care programs for unnecessary testing. Specifically, the government said APS directed lean lab personnel to automatically order certain special tests, called “special stains,” before a pathologist reviewed a routine test, a hematoxylin and eosin stain, to determine whether additional testing was needed. The complaint alleged the protocol led to special stains that were not medically reasonable and necessary and were ineligible for Medicare coverage or reimbursement. In many cases, the government said APS also ordered additional “confirmatory” immunohistochemical testing that was not medically necessary.

“Kickbacks and medically unnecessary testing don’t just violate the law — they endanger patients and drain critical federal health care funds,” said Acting Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Scott J. Lampert of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. “Schemes like this erode trust in the health care system and divert resources away from those who truly need care. HHSOIG will move swiftly and aggressively with our law enforcement partners to uncover these abuses and hold every responsible party accountable.”

In addition to the allegations in the April 8 complaint, the settlement also resolves claims that from Nov. 1, 2018, to Nov. 30, 2020, APS and CEO Kevin Hannah knowingly and willfully provided unlawful kickbacks to Richard Sorgnard through volume-based commission payments to induce referrals for epidermal nerve fiber density testing. The United States contends APS paid Sorgnard 4% of all payments APS collected for ENFD testing he referred, and that the arrangement violated the Anti-Kickback Statute and resulted in false claims under the False Claims Act. Sorgnard previously entered into a settlement with the government to resolve related claims.

“Any entity that participates in health care and reaps illicit profits by taking advantage of and violating the trust given by Medicare and Medicaid programs must be held accountable,” said U.S. Attorney Troy Rivetti for the Western District of Pennsylvania. “This settlement is notice that such illegal conduct simply will not be tolerated.”

As part of the resolution, APS entered into a five-year Corporate Integrity Agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. The agreement requires APS to implement auditing and accountability provisions, including a compliance program, training and education requirements, and a review of physician referral relationships.

The complaint followed three lawsuits originally filed under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act, which allows private parties to sue on behalf of the United States and potentially receive a portion of the recovery. The consolidated cases are United States ex rel. Watkins v. Advanced Pathology Solutions, No. 4:20-cv-1110 (E.D. Ark.); United States ex rel. Aucoin v. Advanced Pathology Solutions, No. 4:21-cv-277 (E.D. Ark.); and United States ex rel. Paulsen v. Advanced Pathology Solutions, LLC, No. 3:22-cv-00652-JPG (E.D. Ark.).

The settlement comes after a $4.75 million settlement reached earlier this year with Atlanta Gastroenterology Associates, a former APS client.

The Justice Department’s Civil Division, Commercial Litigation Branch, Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas are handling the matter, along with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The matter was handled by Fraud Section attorneys Evan Ballan, Jeff McSorley and Kelley Hauser, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jamie Goss Dempsey for the Eastern District of Arkansas, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Skirtich for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Officials also pointed to broader federal efforts to combat health care fraud, noting that tips about potential fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement can be reported to HHS at 800-HHS-TIPS (800-447-8477).