Lehigh Athletics’s Family and Founder’s weekend schedule

On Friday and Saturday, families headed to campus to enjoy a fall weekend full of campus celebrations, traditions and Lehigh sports.

Within two, four home sporting events took place, giving family and community members plenty of opportunities to cheer on the Mountain Hawks. 

For Lehigh Athletics, this was their busiest weekend of the fall semester, and the behind-the-scenes preparations took place months before the first kickoff. 

Kelly Rohrer, associate director of communications for multimedia services, said planning began months before game day. The department began reviewing the fall coverage schedule in July. 

“Once we saw that we were going to have four events in one day, (we) started to reach out and set schedules,” Rohrer said.

Lehigh’s multimedia and athletics communications staff embraced the challenge of covering four home games within hours of one another. The crowded schedule, including a football game, required detailed preparation, coordination and staffing.

Lehigh and the Patriot League are partnered with ESPN+ to live stream the games, so families who weren’t able to make it to campus were still able to watch. 

However, when several games overlapped, every event couldn’t receive the same level of production. The multimedia team adjusted how production equipment would be distributed.

A big part of Rohrer’s role was scheduling crews for Lehigh’s ESPN+ productions and making sure each game had the necessary staff. With multiple simultaneous events, she decided where people were needed most and how staff members could bounce between productions.

Rohrer said between field hockey, football, volleyball and men’s soccer, it required 45 to 50 staff. 

Beyond what viewers saw on ESPN+, members of the athletics communications staff were responsible for recaps, social media coverage, stats and other responsibilities from individual teams. 

Staff members often followed several events at the same time.

Clark Boinis, assistant director of men’s and women’s soccer, men’s basketball, men’s tennis, baseball and men’s and women’s rowing, planned to start his Saturday at the football game managing social media. 

At the same time, he  monitored the women’s soccer team’s away game and provide updates before heading to the men’s soccer game later that day.

The multimedia staff faced challenges on how to divide its resources between broadcasts.

Boinis said freelance camera operators are brought in to help cover sports such as soccer and football. Some staff members can work multiple events in the same day, moving from venue to venue, as games end and others begin.

“Some of those could be one-camera streams without an announcer on them depending on where resources are,” Boinis said. “Never will we have something that is not streamed somewhere.”

For the games that receive a full ESPN+ production, staff members work from the venue and Lehigh’s control room in Stabler Arena. Photographers capture the athletes in action while directors in the control room switch between feeds and work the graphics during the broadcast.

Ryan McGettigan, Lehigh’s multimedia and digital graphics coordinator, said much of the work required is done before the broadcast begins. McGettigan, or one of his colleagues, arrives about two-and-a-half to three hours before a game to set up production, cameras and replay equipment.

“Most people would not realize just how time-consuming everything is,” McGettigan said. “It’s a lot of time and effort you have to put in beforehand and behind the scenes.”

The preparation becomes tricky when events are scheduled back-to-back. McGettigan said equipment used for an earlier game may need to be disassembled, moved and set up again before the next event begins.

“There’s a really quick turnaround time in terms of tearing down the broadcast equipment, the camera equipment, whatever you from the earlier game, in this case, football, and then moving it to our other venue and setting it up for our later contest,” McGettigan said.

For McGettigan, the preparation process comes together once the crew successfully records the opening for the broadcast. 

Before the staff gets there, they organize the commercial breaks, broadcast rundown, visuals and talking points.

“If that pre-recorded opening is good, it’s up to standard, it’s up to what we consider standard for ourselves, then that’s when I kind of take a deep breath,” McGettigan said. “Everything’s good, everything’s calm now. This is when I can really get into the weeds and start having fun.”