When I look back on events like the Junior Nationals, I talk about evolution. I wrote in WIN Magazine a few months back about how Fargo used to be a wrestling purgatory, a strange place where we waited and waited for results.

Now, with Trackwrestling on the scene, results are updated quickly following the completion of bouts. Fans back home don’t have to wait hours to get the results they want.

Recently, USA Wrestling released information about the 2009-10 webcast schedule and all the players who made it possible. Well, not all the players. One major player in the entire success of USAW’s webcast initiative was a company called NewTek. They provided us with the Tricaster technology that took normal, one camera webcasts to another level. This past year in Fargo, we had three camera angles on our featured mat, and integrated another NewTek add-on, TimeWarp, to add replays.

They weren’t mentioned in the release, and they should have. Some of you who dabble in webcasting might know about the Tricaster. It’s been widely used in college athletics for the past few years – so much so that CoSIDA, the national organization of Sports Information Directors has sessions about using NewTek’s products to provide a cost-efficient alternative to buying TV time. I first heard about the Tricaster at the CoSIDA convention (I’m an affiliate member) back in Tampa, shortly before I left the NWCA.

While USA Wrestling did have a position open where my technical knowledge and broadcast abilities benefit our events, NewTek has been there since before my arrival. Before I was even hired, NewTek was at the World Team Trials. In the past 10 months, I’ve had the opportunity to learn and evolve with the technology. When I spoke about integrating Trackwrestling into our webcasts, NewTek’s DataLink provided the engine.

Websites I frequent, like Takedown Radio and Swimming World Magazine, use the Tricaster for their daily and weekly shows. It’s not new, but something we’ve hit the ground running with. I sometimes wonder if we’d have had the technology last year at Wrestling 411, would the show have taken off.

But it’s all hindsight.

The reality is NewTek and Ustream are now pivotal players in our promotion and presentation of wrestling. Their work is not overlooked and it’s used heavily during the season.

Even when play-by-play resources are at a minimum or being saved for finals, the on screen graphics and steady stream is a direct result of NewTek and Ustream’s ability to provide groups like USA Wrestling the resources to give the fans a better user experience.

I didn’t personally webcast anything but the finals in Fargo, but as a fan, you really didn’t need it, because there was an on-screen scoreboard, updated live, as well as a clock. You knew who was wrestling, what mat (well, the only mat in this case), what round and bout number everything was on. It made our lives that much easier.

This year, we’ll be adding more feeds. We will have a featured mat at each event (at least each event I’ll be traveling to) with all the Tricaster/Trackwrestling add ons when available. Since Track is what we use for all our USAW events, it’s safe to say when a Track scoreboard is available, you’ll have those graphics. Supplementary events will be a different story, but with Tricaster, we’ll still be able to do the on-screen scoreboards, but manually.

We look to have at least 20 events covered this year live, and at the lion’s share of those events, will have more than one feed. Ideally, we’d love to have a feed of every mat, but manpower and managing that will still be evolving.

In the time being, I want to thank NewTek, Ustream, Trackwrestling and all our events staff for being able to facilitate this very important aspect of USA Wrestling – free live webcasts of our events.