The football Beavers will be back in Bend this summer, albeit for a shorter stay than in the past.

First-year Oregon State head coach Jonathan Smith announced Tuesday that the team will visit Central Oregon for three days — Aug. 21-23 — as the final stop on a five-location Beaver State Tour.

It will be the third straight year in which the Beavers have staged a series of preseason practices in Bend. The team will again stay at the OSU-Cascades campus and practice at Summit High School. A game-type scrimmage that will be open to the public is scheduled for noon on Aug. 23, to be followed immediately by an autograph session. Free posters will be available.

“Our team enjoys the chance to travel to other communities around the state to embrace Beaver Nation and we are excited about the return to Bend,” Smith said in an OSU release. Oregon State held an April practice at Mountainside High School in Beaverton. Other stops on the Beaver State Tour were in May in Portland, Salem, Medford and Eugene, where Smith, athletic director Scott Barnes and other OSU coaches met with Beaver supporters.

In each of the past two years under Gary Andersen, the Beavers spent a full week in Bend. On Aug. 1 last year following a practice at Summit, Andersen made an unexpectedly early announcement, telling media that program newcomer Jake Luton, a transfer from Ventura College in California, would be OSU’s starting quarterback for its season opener at Colorado State.

Even more unexpectedly, Andersen left the program midway through the season, his third at Oregon State. He was replaced on an interim basis by cornerbacks coach Cory Hall, who guided the Beavers to the conclusion of a disheartening 1-11 campaign.

Smith, an assistant at Washington who starred at quarterback for OSU from 1998 to 2001, was named the Beavers’ new head coach on Nov. 29.

Steve Fenk, associate athletic director at OSU, said the aim of the Beavers’ three-day trip to Bend will be to simulate a regular-season road trip as much as possible. That might be a challenge, given that the Beavers’ first road trip of 2018 will be to Columbus, Ohio, for their Sept. 1 season opener against an Ohio State team expected to contend for the national championship.