Bringing wrestling and gymnastics together under one roof

Iowa State University brought two sports together in January for a bi-annual event known as Beauty and the Beast. Cyclone gymnastics and wrestling shared the floor of Hilton Coliseum and our event production team was on-site providing simultaneous coverage of the event. With 5 cameras, two stats interfaces, 2 PA announcers, and every inch of the video displays in use, we were able to produce a clean event that satisfied both audiences.

CAMERAS

Between the 5 cameras, one camera was dedicated to wrestling, two cameras were dedicated to gymnastics and two cameras were positioned to cover both as the action moved. On the gymnastics side we only covered Iowa State routines so wrestling stayed full screen between rotations and touch warm-ups. However, we had a double box in our switcher when action was happening together.

STATS

For stats we used the All Sport 5000 for wrestling and Beaver Creek ScoreKeeper software to cover gymnastics. From there, our 360 ribbon board was sectioned off to show both individual gymnast results as well as current match information for wrestling. Our center hung display was more focused on wrestling as it gave match by match results. We even had a 2nd All Sport 5000 to only show gymnastics touch-up times and that information also displayed on the ribbon board.

ANNOUNCERS

Another interesting challenge came with having two PA announcers. A juggling act took place to make sure those individuals gave the appropriate information (takedowns, performing gymnasts, etc.) for their event but also did not talk over each other. Only pre-game announcements were assigned ahead of time. One rule we had was the wrestling announcer could not announce while gymnasts were performing on floor exercise. He had to hold things such as takedown calls, escapes and pins until a floor routine was complete.

Overall, this is always a great challenge for our production crew as we push all of equipment to the max, but it is always fun to see everything come together into a clean and polished production.

Iowa State University

Bryan- Daktronics Event Producer at Iowa State University