ESPN Upping Its Game for NCAA Volleyball Coverage

Eighty-five crew members, 14 cameras, an office trailer full of video editors, weeks of preparation and years of experience… all of that and more is required to bring you the three matches and some added features of this year’s NCAA Volleyball Semifinals and Championship match on television.

Just as it is an honor for those who get to play in the matches, it is no less of an occasion for the many individuals on the television side, who have the opportunity to bring the event live to the masses worldwide.

“When it really comes down to it, this is the biggest stage,” ESPN Coordinating Producer Pat Lowry said. “In the end, say what you will about what I am doing for what is happening on ESPN, but these student-athletes have worked their entire lives for this moment and I don’t ever want to leave one of these feeling like we didn’t do the best that we possibly could. For me, as I am looking at it, this is a big moment that so few people ever get the opportunity to experience and it deserves to be done right. It really does matter to the whole team that we have put together that we do a good job. This isn’t another let’s go to work and do our job and go home. this is something we genuinely care about.”

And Lowry should know. She meticulously picks the individuals that make up the championships team both behind the scenes and on camera. An award winner in her own right, as part of the team that won a Sports Emmy Award for Outstanding Transmedia Coverage of the College Football Playoff National Championship Megacast, and also Sports Emmy Awards for World Figure Skating and NBA Finals broadcasts, Lowry is well aware of what it takes.

In addition to being experienced in the sports world, Lowry has been specifically responsible for volleyball on ESPN, the SEC Network and the Longhorn Network for the past two years and actually first dipped her toe in volleyball broadcasting back in 1996 at the Olympics.

“We have people here who work on some of ESPN’s biggest shows,” Lowry said. “We have camera operators and EVS operators who work on the College Football National Championships, the Women’s Final Four, Monday Night Football and the NBA. I would not tell you that I am a volleyball guru, I hire volleyball gurus. I don’t consider myself an expert, but I do think I have done the right research and everything else to know who the best people are to put us in the best position to be successful.”

Some of those individuals are back for up to their 10th repeat performance at the NCAAs. We will introduce some of those players a little later.

THE NETWORK

For the second straight year, the semifinals matches will air on ESPN, not one of the other channels in the ESPN family of networks. The finals will be broadcast on ESPN2 as they have been each of the last three years.

Since 2014, the semifinal broadcasts have brought in anywhere from 350,000 to 568,000 viewers age two and older depending on the participating teams and start times, etc. The championship viewership has ranged from 576,000 to 820,000. For instance, the 2016 match began and hour and a half later than than those in 2014 and 2015 and there was a slight drop in viewership.

Lowry and her team are quick to point out that the sports itself and viewership do not impact whether the matches air on ESPN or other channels, it is about contracts and other items.

“Last year, we talked about how the timing was perfect and we didn’t have contractual obligations to do basketball or football that night,” Lowry said. “A lot of times what network you end up on is not about the level of the sport, because I think volleyball has deserved to be on ESPN all this time, but it is about the contractual obligations the company has in different places. So, when the opportunity opened up to put the semifinals on ESPN last year, it was huge. Because if you watch the game, the pace of it, the athleticism and everything else, volleyball is an incredible thing to watch. Maybe we will catch the attention of some people with some good volleyball, some great elements and some good storytelling and maybe teach the game a little bit.”

THE ANNOUNCING TEAM

The only people much of the viewing audience sees, besides an occasional camera operator dodging a ball courtside, are the on-camera announcers. This year’s team is one of the best, featuring U.S. National Team Coach Karch Kiraly, Kiraly’s former 1984 Olympic gold medal teammate and longtime broadcaster Paul Sunderland and Holly Rowe.

Last year, Karch and Paul teamed up for the NCAA championships when Beth Mowins’ schedule became so overloaded with college football that she couldn’t work a lot of regular season volleyball. She approached Lowry and handed the tournament mantle to Sunderland.

“I had listened to Paul call the Olympics and I liked him in the play by play role because he did such a good job of setting up the analysts because he knows the game so well,” Lowry shared. “Then, you have someone like Karch, who knows, respects and cares for the sport. Putting them together I feel like we are getting some really good commentary and insight into volleyball. What I like about what they do together is that for the inside volleyball crowd, they are giving some pretty decent insight, but they are not going too much over the heads of a novice. We are still trying to grow the sport, and they have a nice balance for two people who know so much about it.”

Not to be forgotten is Rowe, who has served as a full-time sideline reporter since 1998 working with football, college basketball and college volleyball to name a few. She began her career with volleyball in junior high and high school and in the media as student reporter covering the sport at the University of Utah and has gone on to be a part of many of the sport’s momentous occasions.

“What I love about Holly is that she loves the sport,” Lowry said. “She will sit down in between our sessions with players and coaches on Wednesday and there are either coke cans or different types of candy on the table and Karch is moving them around in different positions, teaching her more and more and more about volleyball. Holly’s passion for the game and her ability to humanize and relate to people brings so much to the broadcast. So, we have two volleyball gurus and a budding volleyball guru, who is one of the best reporters ESPN has and she tells stories like noone’s business. That is how they came to be a team.”

THE CREW

The crew of 85 individuals, includes several industry and NCAA Championship veterans. Operations producer Barb Williams has done seven previous national championships. Assistant Director Heather Wilson is on her ninth go round. Director Brad Sheldon is on his fifth championship and 10th season with the sport. Rowe is calling is in her 12th season overall and fifth consecutive championship run. Kiraly began calling the tournament in 2007. (NOTE: We’ll have more from some those individuals including memorable moments in another story tomorrow.)

The championships crew also covered the Palo Alto Regional last week.

A longtime member of the team, Meg Aronowitz, who covered the NCAAs for nearly 10 years, has moved on to other ventures within the ESPN ranks, now helping set up the school control rooms across the country, but Lowry is quick to point out that the broadcasts would not be where they are now if it were not for her guidance.

“If I could throw any kudos out to someone, it would be Meg,” Lowry said. “She put me in a great place to succeed, to come in and follow her because she had a great team in place.”

NEW FEATURES

This year’s semifinals coverage will include an on-site studio show in between the two matches. The cast of characters for the studio show includes volleyball announcers and analysts in Tiffany Greene and Nell Fortner alongside 2016 National Championship coach at Stanford John Dunning.

“What we are really hoping to do is to keep volleyball in that entire window and take the broadcast to another level,” Lowry said. “Tiffany Greene, who calls a lot of play by play for us during the regular season, is going to host it. John Dunning, who could actually be coaching again in the national championship, is going to be on the sideline for us. I think he is going to bring a real unique insight into what is going on and give us some tidbits that we don’t understand from the outside. To give him another analyst to banter with is Nell Fortner, who won a national championship playing volleyball at Texas and went on to be the coach of the Olympic basketball team and had a great basketball career. It will be interesting to see her energy with John’s intellect and Tiffany moderating them.”

The show will include some interviews, some analysis, some personality pieces to get to know the players better and also a preview the match that is coming up.

In addition to the studio show, ESPN is bringing in VERT technology. The network has utilized the system in the past, but this year plans to be able to use real-time replays to show a vertical leap, etc., and give viewers better idea of the athleticism required by the sport.

“With VERT, we have some other little pieces that will try to give it some context as to how athletic these student-athletes are, because it is incredible that they are jumping out of the gym the way they are,” Lowry said. “We are hoping that using the VERT technology will allow us to draw in the audience and give them a respect for how fast the game is, how athletic the players are, how high they are jumping, how much they are jumping and how tremendous of an athlete you have to be to be able to do that.”

MEDIA DAY

Wednesday was media day in Kansas City, with interviews interspersed with team practices. ESPN’s setup included three rooms, one for interviews, one for still photos and a third with moving lights and a fog machine that will allow super slo-mo images of the players, which will be edited to “build drama.”

The amount of people needed to pull off the video editing portion of things requires its own office trailer and a team of amazing individuals who have less than 24 hours to turn all of the video into the items you will see on screen during the matches.

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Photo shoot media day for @ncaavolleyball teams. @pennstatevball @huskervball SO FUN

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EQUIPMENT

This year’s broadcast will feature 14 cameras, compared to four or five which are used for a typical regular season match. The cameras will cover everything, including unmanned cameras aimed at the baseline and the net. Each will be tied to its own replay machine, so fans will see the match from every pertinent angle.

With the replay/challenge system in effect, all angles will technically be available although the review system can only take in a certain number of cameras at a time. So there is potentially a chance that the broadcast may show a replay that has not been seen by the officiating crew.

“What we can do, is if they tell us what they are looking for specifically, we can feed it out to them to see it,” Lowry said. “They can use them, it is just a matter of the communication. It is interesting because there just aren’t the resources that you have internationally where they have cameras set up everywhere that are high speed and actually can tell if a ball has touched a finger or not. College volleyball hasn’t had the chance to grow into that yet, but I think they are going to get there.”

NCAA Championships on ESPN by the Numbers

14 – Cameras

85 – Crew Members

568,000 – Largest Semifinal Audience since 2014

820,000 – Largest Championships Audience since 2014