The News has selected Brian Barrett, a senior sport management major, as the 2023 Undergraduate Student of the Year.

Barrett utilized his sport management major outside of the classroom by being the student manager for the men’s baseball team for two years which eventually led to him working with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Vice President of ticket sales for the St. Louis Cardinals, Joe Strohm, connected with Barrett informing him about the opportunities that the Cardinals had to offer.

Strohm put Barrett in connection with his future supervisor.

Barrett is currently the ticket sales associate for the Cardinals. Barrett said he inbounds phone calls and assists fans attending games with their tickets.

Barrett has been involved with the Newman Catholic Center for the four years he has been at Eastern. He’s led the panther awakening retreat, which is for new students to help build the community.

“As far as leading that, it was cool to lead other students and kind of allow them to know because they were passionate about it and just kind of channeling that to a productive retreat,” Barrett said.

Starting the position in Fall 2020 during his sophomore year, Barrett helped with preparing and disassembling practices for Eastern’s men’s baseball team. He was also an extra hand for the coaching staff.

He concluded his time as student manager during the Dec. 2022.

While being in the position, Barrett was able to “experience a lot of good coaches.”

One of the coaches that Barrett worked with was Jason Anderson. Barrett said all of the coaches were supportive of him and the other managers.

The coaches helped Barrett obtain connections and along with the baseball players, made the environment fun to be around.

“We weren’t just the managers, like you kind of think about them being lower than everyone else, but they didn’t make it feel that way,” Barrett said.

Barrett said he was “super excited” when he found out about winning the undergraduate of the year award and said it was “an absolute honor.”

Cam’ron Hardy can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].