It’s a busy time for Veterans Memorial Auditorium, hosting the  Iowa State High School Wrestling Championships, the Iowa High School Girls’ Basketball Tournament and the Iowa High School Boys’ Basketball Tournament in rapid succession. The events draw spectators from all over the state. The construction of the Iowa Events Center has added to the already difficult task of hosting these events. We spoke with Joy Giudicessi, marketing and events manager for Vets Auditorium about the challenges of hosting the tournaments.

Q: How many people attend the tournaments?

A: I would say state wrestling had over 80,000 fans. Women’s basketball will [have similar attendance], but it’s spread out over a week. Men’s basketball, too. There are usually 250,000 people in attendance between the three.

Q: Does the construction of the new Iowa Events Center complicate the staging of the high school wrestling and basketball tournaments?

A: The construction means we have to rethink events we’ve had here for 40-plus years, how they approach the facility, how they load and unload equipment, and how people come and go inside and outside the facility. Its important to re-examine how we approach every event, no matter how many times we’ve done it.

An additional challenge we have right now is that the auditorium has lost some of its storage space. The storage facility located on the East end of the auditorium along Third Street had to be torn down for the relocation of the street and utilities. Equipment is being stored off-site. Six semi-trailers housed the extra bleachers used for the tournaments. In addition to the usual huge manhours required for the setup of the bleachers, building them by inserting individual nuts and bolts, we had to truck in our equipment, unload it and organize it.

Q: How did other entities involved in tournament planning and execution help deal with the new complications?

A: It really helped that this year that the Iowa High School Athletic Association changed state wrestling from six sessions in three days to 10 sessions in four days. That lowered congestion by spreading out attendance. It went really well.

We had support from every imaginable city and county body. There was extensive inter-governmental agency cooperation, the way agencies are supposed to work together. The media was awesome in providing information. The Internet was another great tool, allowing people to find out about the event they wanted to attend, go to the Iowa [Department of Transportation] website, find a good route, and download and print maps.