By Ashlyn Beck | News Editor
This year’s Baylor Homecoming parade was nearly 120 years in the making.
On Nov. 24, 1909, the Golden Wave Band led the first Baylor Homecoming parade. The first procession of its kind included participants from Waco and Baylor and, much like today’s rendition, traversed through downtown Waco before coming down 5th Street and onto campus. In 1909, though, the parade journeyed all the way to Carroll Field for participants to watch Baylor football take on TCU.
“After arriving at the university, the immense throng crowded among the grandstands and vacant spaces on Carroll Athletic Field to witness the football game between Baylor and their old-time rivals, Texas Christian University,” a Nov. 27, 1909, Waco Tribune-Herald article reads.
With a collection of around 60 automobiles and 60 carriages, the parade came from anything but humble beginnings. The procession, about 30 to 40 blocks long, included then-Baylor President Samuel Palmer Brooks, senior class representatives, organizations, clubs and teams, according to the Baylor Homecoming website.
Baylor 2025 Homecoming Parade Chairman and Edna senior Kaydence Chiles said she kept the ethos of the first parade on her mind while planning this year’s event.
“It brings both Baylor’s campus and the Waco community together to celebrate our shared history,” Chiles said. “The alumni of the past are allowed to come watch an hour and a half long parade that showcases the best of Baylor and Waco.”
Baylor’s 1909 parade was dubbed the first ever homecoming celebration in the nation in October 2024. According to a Nov. 29, 1909, Lariat article, the event made an impression on everyone.
“The homecoming parade is admittedly the most successful and creditable thing of its kind ever put on by a Waco institution,” the article reads. “Every feature was distinctively grand. All things were on a gala exhibition.”
Despite the event’s celebratory inauguration, Chiles said it has only become more notable in the last 120 years. The biggest change, she said, is the addition of floats to the procession.
“Campus organizations come together to make larger-than-life floats with moving parts and special effects that are awe-inspiring,” Chiles said.
Though the homecoming parade dates back to 1909, planning for the 2025 parade began in February. Chiles said she and her team worked tirelessly with the City of Waco to get permits, contact vendors and create a parade that now includes over 160 campus and community entries, including 14 balloons, 10 floats and others.
“I‘ve seen multiple sides of the planning process as well as made great relationships with both participants and administration,” Chiles said. “The planning process and set up of it all is very stressful, but it’s always so rewarding in the end.”
A Baylor legacy herself, Chiles said the parade has always been a special event for her. For Chiles, it’s not just a celebration of alumni coming home; it’s a culmination of generations of Wacoans and Baylor students continuing to uphold traditions and unite at a place they call home.
A ‘94 Baylor graduate and Vice President for Engagement and Campaign Co-Director Toby Barnett said this sentiment is exactly what makes Baylor Homecoming fundamental to the Baylor experience.
“It’s the one time a year when everybody’s on campus,” Barnett said. “They’re all doing different things, but they’re all coming back to this place we call ‘home.’”
Further, homecoming turns the campus, normally swarming with college students, into a space filled with Bears young and old, students, future and past, and visitors near and far.
“They’re all there enjoying a tradition together that represents a time when they were students,” Barnett said. “It’s truly a special thing that doesn’t often happen at other universities, but we see it year in, year out here at Baylor.”
According to a January 1910 edition of the Baylor University Bulletin, the first Baylor Homecoming was just that. The bulletin quotes a Waco Times-Herald article that recounted the event in its print.
“Proud of Old Baylor,” the bulletin reads. “Well, we should say so. With an origin antedating that of the state of Texas; with a history that has not one sullied page; with a purpose that contemplates both earth and heaven, Baylor is justly entitled to the love of her student body and to the reverence of those of us who have regard to the good, the true and the beautiful.”
This year’s parade will start downtown at 7 a.m. on Saturday. It’ll make its way to Baylor about 30 minutes in and is available for streaming on the Baylor University Facebook and YouTube accounts.
