Thursday, September 19, 2024
After the Waupaca junior varsity volleyball team won two games out of three over the Clintonville Truckers Sept. 12, audience attention was directed to a large plastic tarp hanging on the wall.
It hung over the bleachers that are straight ahead when a person walks into the high school gymnasium.
School board members, school administrators and sponsors stood under it as a rope was yanked and the falling tarp revealed a new giant-sized video display board. The screen came alive with a graphic display of popping fireworks and a swirling Let’s Go Comets slogan.
That’s just the beginning of many things this machine can do. Besides sporting events, Principal Mike Werbowsky pointed out that he would like to see it used during the graduation ceremony, with profiles and pictures of each student flashed across the screen.
Physical education teachers can plug in a yoga video for class and likewise it will be used for marketing and communications education.
The board is made by Daktronics and their boards are universal in the world of sporting venues.
Daktronics makes a curriculum to train teachers to use the board and a class can be based around it. In such a class, students will learn to use the board and make sports videos and advertisements for local businesses to be displayed on it. A Waupaca student hired as a media intern at Lambeau Field would be able to step up to a Daktronics control panel and know exactly how to operate it.
“It was on a wish list but it all started with the premise of how do we – with budgets tightening up – create revenue in our district? More specifically, how do we create revenue in the athletic department?” said Athletic Director Rob Scherrer. He pointed out that after three years, they would be making a profit off the video board.
Along the left and right boarders of the screen are the founding sponsors: Waupaca Foundry, Strongwood, Farmers State Bank, L&L Propane, Faulks Brothers Construction and Neuville Motors.
Spectators will see ads from them but Scherrer also noted they are looking for smaller sponsors to run advertisements on the video board.
“It will be like a college-game day experience. You’re going to see the starting line-ups. Anytime there is a blocked shot, there will be a block on the board. During time-outs there will be commercials by our sponsors. It could be a static ad or a video,” said Scherrer.
The video board cost a little over $100,000. It’s one of the most high-definitions video boards on the market and one of the biggest ones in the state for a high school gym.
The long-term plan is that as the new video board generates revenue, those funds will be saved up to purchase an upgrade for a new video board/score board at Comet Field. It’s an ongoing self-sustaining plan to build up the athletic facility infrastructure.
The term JumboTron is a genericized trademark, like Kleenax for tissue or Xerox for photocopies. Sony stopped making devices under the name in 2001. South Dakota-based Daktronics is now a global leader in large video display boards.
