By Emily Cousins | Staff Writer
The Baylor Line returns without masks and capacity restrictions this year. First-year students will be preassigned to one of the first three home games to ensure they get to participate.
Matt Burchett, director of Student Activities, told Lariat TV News that all online first-year students from last year will be included in the pool of current freshmen and transfers who will be assigned to the first three home games.
“Two big objectives in the Baylor Line here is to ensure every first-year student, BU ‘25, has the opportunity to run the line and make sure that students who are BU ’24, our sophomores who were freshmen last year in the middle of the pandemic, knowing we had a very disrupted 2020 football season, to give them an opportunity to run the line as well,” Burchett said.
Burchett said the second-year students will be put in a lottery for the Ohio State University and University of Texas games. He also said the homecoming game will be a general lottery, and the final home game against Texas Tech University will be for the seniors.
“We want to provide as many opportunities as we possibly can have for students to have that really special moment of running across the field and lining up for the football team — and the flames and the fireworks and the music,” Burchett said. “It’s such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and so we don’t want to deprive any student of that very distinctive experience. So, our hope is to accommodate for all of those various populations that we know may have missed out or need an opportunity that were not provided last year, and then hopefully the 2022 season will return to normal.”
Kingwood freshman Jennifer Hernandez said she is looking forward to running the Baylor Line. She said when they practiced it at Line Camp, she enjoyed the excitement and energy around her.
“I’m excited that things are semi-back to normal,” Hernandez said. “We can actually do more, especially more than last year.”
Burchett said even in the chaos the last school year brought, Baylor found creative ways to include students in the traditions.
“I think all of our students felt the weight of those challenges that we were facing as a community, facing this institution and they were facing individually,” Burchett said. “I think one of the great characteristics of the Baylor family and of our students in general is that perseverance and resilience that we display day in and day out, year in and year out.”
