The West Virginia state high school basketball championships may never be decided on the court this season. WVSSAC Executive Director Berne Dolan offered a somber take Friday, noting that it’s nearing the point of no return whether the boys’ and girls’ tournaments can be held, along with spring sports.
Classrooms are closed until, at minimum, May 1. Any further delays and the already slim hopes of sports renewed this season dwindles to next to nil.
But that doesn’t mean a champion can’t be crowned. In fact, three have, on the boys’ side anyway.
Enter young Robbie Mounts of Video Productions, Inc. in Charleston.
VPI is a company owned by his father, Butch Mounts. It handles video streaming, editing, recruiting videos and other customizable options throughout the Mountain State.
While MetroNews is the name you’re familiar with from covering the Super Six and boys’ and girls’ basketball championship games and the state baseball tournament, its Video Productions that handles the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds, along with all other WVSSAC state tournaments. Softball? VPI. Soccer, volleyball, wrestling, track & field? VPI, as well.
Not only does VPI handle custom recordings, but it also livestreams all of the events covered on a multitude of platforms, including the company’s Twitter, YouTube and Facebook pages.
In business since 2014, Bruce noted that Video Productions’ streams have totaled seven million minutes of watch time—this year alone.
But like everyone else, Bruce, Robbie and their respective employees are presently waiting for sports to return and finding themselves with an unplanned amount of free time.
That’s when Robbie had a plan and put it into motion.
This Should Be Fun
Robbie’s a 2013 graduate of George Washington High School and handles more tech-intensive side of the business, along with live streaming coordinating and the occasional film work. And, like a lot of guys his age, lists video games as one of his interests.
So, when Robbie learned of the indefinite postponement of the boys’ tournament, he decided to run out and get a copy of NBA 2K20 for his PlayStation 4.
While being the most popular of the console NBA gaming titles, it also has extensive create a team and character customization features. There’s also a dedicated fan base that designs teams and uploads them to the 2K cloud server for the entire player base to access.
He set out looking for teams that qualified for the state tournament and found a number of them were already created by one user. He downloaded those, tweaked the logos where necessary, then set to work creating the remaining teams. That total included eight additions teams on the Class AA level as it hadn’t completed regional final action.
That was the “easy” part. Players also had to be created. Robbie wasn’t about to phone these in either. It helped that in the normal course of Video Productions calendar that he’d seen a number of the teams already and had access to rosters, lineups and a good idea of which players were capable of what. But it wasn’t all teams. For this, he set out to watch Hudl videos, YouTube, anything to get some video on the players and teams he’d yet to see in person.
Robbie and Bruce originally talked about just doing the AA regional and tournament games. But Robbie felt that wasn’t enough. It had to be all or nothing.
“It was kind of a just do it or don’t do it thing,” he said. “I wasn’t going to do it and only put so much effort into certain teams and players. That simply wasn’t right. I think (Bruce) was trying to save time and talk about just doing AA and I said not a chance. We’re doing it all or nothing.”
He picked up the game on March 23. The first day VPI was able to run any of its simulated games via livestream was April 8. Calling it a time-intensive undertaking doesn’t quite do it justice.
“I can’t tell you how many days in that two and half weeks or so that I’d wake up, start at it, only stop to eat and go back to bed, only to get up and do it the next day.”
The Numbers Say You’ve Lost a Step
Robbie explained on the company Facebook page that no player was rated higher than 85 or lower than 75. He wanted to ratings to reflect what he discovered through research or in-person viewing but didn’t want anyone overpowered.
Naturally, some still complained, even if in jest.
“We had a lot of Poca people comment that (Isaac) McNeely wasn’t a good enough shot from the outside,” Robbie said. “His perimeter shooting rating was an A, so I can’t really help a whole lot more than that.” D — asdfas
With teams designed and players created, it was time to set about the important part. Simulating the tournament itself.
First, Robbie had to get the AA regional final games out of the way. Once that was accomplished, the unofficial digital state tournament could begin.
Locally, the Ohio Valley had three participants in the tournament, Wheeling Park in AAA and Wheeling Central and Magnolia in A. Matchups were dictated by seeding.
Magnolia lost in the quarterfinals to Charleston Catholic. The Irish defeated the Maroon Knights in the semifinal round and followed that by beating Williamstown in the A title game.
University topped Martinsburg 73-65 in the AAA championship. The Bulldogs defeated Wheeling Park 71-57 in the semifinal round. In AA it was defending champion Chapmanville holding off Bluefield, 59-58. You can view the AAA, AA, and A championship games, along with all the quarter and semifinal round action via these YouTube links or visit Video Productions’ Facebook page and click on videos.
Well Received
But did the public enjoy watching the digital games as a substitute. The numbers never lie.
“The Logan-Poca game had the most views overall. We’re at about 180,000 for the whole tournament. Poca and Logan had around 18,000,” Bruce said. “But they are both local teams and we’ve covered Poca a bit and Logan now for some years. But that’s one of the reasons we were happy to do this is to cover some teams and areas that we normally don’t cover, get us in touch with those fan bases.”
Bruce noted streaming the games across multiple platforms is also important. Some of the less tech savvy of the populace may not be able to access the videos using Facebook or Twitter. But a number of people own a smart TV and it’s easier to access YouTube via the TV and stream the games that way instead of fighting with a computer or a smartphone.
