By Gillian Taylor | Staff Writer
This homecoming, Kappa Alpha Theta nailed down all items on its float to avoid an incident like the one it experienced during last year’s parade, when the float toppled.
Now partnered with Sigma Alpha Epsilon to construct their float, Fair Oaks senior and current head float chair Anna Coulter said the group made sure to cement their larger structures to the bed of the float.
In 2021, Kappa Alpha Theta and Phi Kappa Chi worked together to build an Atlantis-themed float.
According to Bloomington, Ill., senior and former head float chair Anna Stephan, each team receives guidelines from the Baylor Chamber of Commerce when constructing a float. She said last year’s guidelines established the construction must be under 15 feet tall. Erring on the side of caution, Stephan said the team made sure the float was inches under the requirement.
The tallest part of the float featured the towers of Old Baylor Park in Independence. Stephan said early on in the parade, the tower hit overhanging tree branches, and many members tried climbing on the float to remove the entangled branches.
“We actually hit a lot of the tree limbs by a good three or four feet,” Emily Tidey, Baylor alumna and former assistant float chair, said. “It wasn’t even like a couple of inches kind of a mistake. It was like a three- or four-foot mistake.”
Tidey said there was a miscommunication between the tow truck driver pulling the float and the students on and alongside it. She said the parade marshal told the driver to continue driving while parts of the float were still entangled in the branches, unaware that several students were atop the nearly 15-foot-tall construction.
The tower began to fall as the driver continued, Tidey said, resulting in some of the students getting injured. She said luckily, most of the students were able to clear out of the way before it fell.
Tidey said the crashing of the tower led to other problems on the float. The float had several moving pieces as well as a water feature. When water began leaking because of the destruction, it flooded the electrical pieces, resulting in several sparks and a few small fires on the construction.
“We definitely did not prepare ourselves for something like that,” Tidey said. “We thought things were taken care of and that the tree limbs would be checked before we went through the parade route, but we kind of just had to handle it as it happened.”
According to Coulter, the height limit this year is the same as last year: 15 feet. However, the team decided to keep their float at 12 and a half feet to ensure a smooth drive through the parade.
“If the trees hit [our float] because they aren’t trimmed high enough this year, our float is so structurally sound that there’s no way they’ll fall over again,” Coulter said. “Everything is nailed and bolted down to the trailer itself, not even to just the pallets.”
Stephan said although the whole situation was frustrating last year, she was proud of the months of hard work the team had put into the float.
“I was a little bit sad, but you know, there’s not much you can do about it,” Stephan said. “We had pictures with it, and judging had already happened, so the only thing we could really do was keep going.”
Stephan jokingly said even though the float was destroyed, they were lucky the theme was Atlantis because it was supposed to be in “ruins” anyway.
Coulter said she has a good feeling about the team’s float design this year and is proud of her sorority and the fraternity members for their hard work. She said the ultimate redemption story would be to place in the float competition this year.
