May 18, 2010
By Leigh Torbin
UCFAthletics.com
ORLANDO, Fla. (UCFAthletics.com) - The UCF softball team opens NCAA Tournament play on Friday but they aren't the only Knights thinking about a national championship right now as UCF Athletics' video services staff has been named a finalist for a College Sports Media Award.
UCF's highlight video from the annual All-Sports Banquet, encompassing a full year's worth of effort chronicling UCF sports and titled "To Be Knights", was named one of eight finalists in the Special Feature category amongst Division I schools.
Thousands of hours of shooting every UCF home event in 2009-10 (plus selected away contests) and painstaking hours of editing by UCF's diligent staff not only produced the tremendous highlights that UCF fans enjoy weekly on the TV program SportsKnight, but also the clips that comprise this seven-minute compilation.
"The sheer volume of what we shoot allows for the success of pieces like this," Director of Video Services John Kvatek said. "Because you have a larger pool of highlights, it allows our shooters to shoot the close-ups and take risks with their camera work aiming for things that can make for such a dramatic video. Our crew has a tremendous amount of experience shooting and editing sports and, when they have a chance to be turned loose over the course of a year, projects of this caliber are possible."
"I'm proud that it isn't just football and basketball which are our most popular sports," said Coordinator of Video Broadcast Productions Jeff Sharon who shot much of the video for the package. "We're home of some of the great student-athletes for all sports in the country and I'm glad that we showed that. I'm proud to be able to showcase the tennis players and soccer players and all of them. It shines a spotlight on them with an equal playing field with the higher profile sports."
"I think that the title `To Be Knights' applies to what went into the video as well as the success of our teams," Senior Video Editor and Producer Brian Fernandez said. "We wanted to show our student-athletes at their best and excelling and we did plenty of that this year. They're the ones who created the success but we went through extensive video coverage and logging of what we shot to ensure that you had the best of the best of the best in this package and I`m happy that it's been so well received."
The contest is sponsored by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and the Sports Video Group (SVG). The winner will be announced on June 8 at the College Sports Video Summit in Atlanta. Other nominees in the category include clips by Texas Tech, Georgia, Fairfield, Oregon, Miami and Stanford.
Kvatek, and his staff which is responsible for everything from team coaching video to game day stadium video board production to the weekly production of three television shows, was also recently recognized as the Conference USA Video Coordinator of the Year for the third time in the past four years by the Collegiate Sports Video Association.
For the latest news on the Knights, log on to UCFAthletics.com - the official site for UCF varsity sports. The site, which also contains ticket and Golden Knights Club donor information, is also the home of UCF's new online apparel store. Also visit UCFPhotos.com, the exclusive fan source for UCF action sports pictures.