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Baylor officially announces new on-campus track facility

The quest to bring all of Baylor's varsity sports back to campus took another step today. Next-door to the $250+ million Baylor Stadium will be a brand-new $13.6 million track facility, complete with lockerrooms, stadium seating, and training buildings.

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

The idea of building a track facility next to the football stadium is hardly new news at this point since we've talked about it here and even speculated on its exact position with relation, but the official announcement is news, nonetheless. The last few years have seen unprecedented growth of Baylor Athletics, and now all of our varsity athletic programs are back on campus, where they should have been all along.

The link above contains a rendering that jives with what we've already heard and/or supposed about the relative position of the track. From the looks of things, the facility will run north-south generally along the eastern edge of the stadium site, leaving the peninsula area open for tailgating/parking and making use of the parking lots at the stadium. If you were going to put it somewhere over there, that spot made the most sense. Also, and this is from the article, it should be noted that fundraising to date has paid for phase 1 of the plan as currently designed, and the facility is being built with later expansion in mind once fundraising takes care of the rest. For now, it will have a 6,000 square foot team building with lockerrooms for both teams, 15,000 square feet of training space, and stadium seating for over 5,000 spectators.

I remember reading somewhere that 45 million people drive past Baylor on I-35 every year, and now, when they do so, they will see now only the finest stadium in college football, but one of the finest track facilities, as well.

In other, non-athletic news, the Regents also announced the approval of plans for the new business school, as well as a PhD in Health Sciences Research to be conducted through the business school, in conjunction with the institute for health policy and leadership. That's pretty interesting.