In a massive effort to bring awareness to the plight of homeless veterans, a team from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, lined up 1,203 sleeping bags — stretching a quarter mile long — to provide comfort and hopefully break a Guinness World Record (GWR).
“When we saw the sheer number of sleeping bags that we had collected, that really got a hold of us,” Sam Esparza, 24, an event manager at Baylor’s McLane Stadium told Fox News Digital.
The current World Record for the longest line of sleeping bags is 550, according to the GWR website.
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“Once we laid them out and saw that 550 was only halfway there, we were like, ‘This is insane,'” Esparza said. “It was a lot more sleeping bags than we ever could have imagined.”
“It was 1,419 feet exactly,” he continued. “So everybody was excited, especially at the end when we knew we actually broke the record.”
The record attempt happened on Tuesday, July 4. The team said their end game is to donate the sleeping bags to veterans in need.
“There are over 2,000 homeless veterans in Texas,” Meagan Noranbrock, program supervisor at Veterans OneStop, told Fox News Digital.
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“And it’s not just something that happens overnight. When people get discharged from the military, sometimes it’s a struggle landing on their feet. Or maybe they think it’s going to be okay and little by little things happen. Everybody’s transition is different.”
The Heart of Texas Veterans OneStop is a nonprofit facility that offers veterans and their families fundamental resources and services all in one place.
“This is more than just sleeping bags,” Noranbrock said. “It’s a sleeping bag, but with it comes our friendly face, our resources, our support system, letting these veterans know that they are not alone and they have help should they choose to seek it.”
The idea was born through a collaboration between Esparza, Mar Magnusen — an associate professor of sport management at Baylor University — and another Baylor member involved in helping veterans.
Magnusen teaches a class called Athletic Fundraising and Development, which helps graduate students best learn how to generate revenue, primarily by way of fundraising for athletic departments.
At the end of the semester, Magnusen said, each of his students pitch a fundraising project that he or she is passionate about.
“And then as a class, we kind of dissect it and see what’s excellent, what can be improved, and how to make it feasible,” Magnusen added.
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Esparza had an idea to do something big at McLean Stadium, raising awareness for a cause and potentially breaking a world record.
“Sam and I met in my office and kind of put our brains together because I had an idea to do something with veterans,” Magnusen said.
He went on, “I’d had a student in my program, Kevin Davis, who is a Marine Corps veteran and head of the VETS (Veteran Educational and Transition Services) program at Baylor.”
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Between the three of them, a plan was hatched to host the event in McLane Stadium, support veterans and attempt to beat the record.
Esparza, being on staff at McLane Stadium, was in charge of operations. Magnusen lead fundraising efforts, while Davis handled veteran outreach and recruited Noranbrock to help distribute the sleeping bags to veterans in need.
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An account was set up on Baylor’s crowdfunding platform, Torch, and donations started rolling in for the purchase of sleeping bags.
The team and a host of volunteers — including Baylor president Dr. Linda Livingstone and her husband Brad Livingsone and some local veterans — arrived to the stadium on July 4 and went to work, taking 45 minutes to line up the sleeping bags.
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The team then packaged up the sleeping bags and put them in storage until GWR confirms the record is broken.
Kylie Galloway, a spokesperson for GWR, confirmed to Fox News Digital that the group received the application for the attempt.
“We are currently awaiting evidence to review,” Galloway added.
Esparza kept his GoPro camera running all morning and produced a time-lapse video that was shot from the stadium press box (See the video at the top of this article).
The team took photos of every step, all of which will be submitted as evidence.
The longest line of sleeping bags record of 550 is currently held by Mid-America Christian University in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It was achieved on April 22, 2022, according to the GWR website.
Magnusen said they are hoping to hear from GWR by the end of July, and the sleeping bags can then be distributed to veterans throughout Texas.
“When people leave the military, there is nobody holding your hand saying, ‘OK, this is your next step,’” said Noranbrock, who is herself a veteran.
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“You have to figure out so much on your own and it’s really daunting. We want veterans to know there’s help. It’s like the doors are opening a little bit with the symbolism of these sleeping bags,” she said.
For Esparza, the whole event was somewhat personal as he had a grandfather and an uncle in the Navy, he said.
“It makes me feel good inside,” he said, later adding, “It’s kind of full circle, having family in the armed forces and being able to help people any way that I can.