City Garners a ‘10’ from SEC; Future Championships Possible

Host cities and venues generally have a year to prepare for the Southeastern Conference Gymnastics Championships.

This year, the Von Braun Center had barely two months to prepare for the event after it was pulled from New Orleans because that city was deemed a COVID-19 hot spot. Alabama won the title with a late surge to edge three-time reigning champion LSU on March 20.

The championships weren’t held in 2020 because of the pandemic.

The event received rave reviews from beginning to end, leaving those closely associated in awe of how quickly the VBC and the city was able to pull it off in such a short amount of time.

“The support from the city, from the Convention and Visitors Bureau, from the Von Braun Center, the sports commission, all of those partners did a phenomenal job,’’ said Tiffany Daniels, a former basketball player at Georgia who serves the SEC as an associate commissioner and senior women’s administrator.

Despite having less seating capacity than previous championship sites New Orleans, Birmingham, Nashville and St. Louis, the support and ensuing reception among participants perhaps make the VBC’s Propst Arena a possible destination for future SEC championships.

“I do think that the city will certainly be under consideration,’’ Daniels said.

Tickets, limited because of the pandemic and pod seating, went fast. The 6,000-seat Propst Arena could only accommodate 2,200 seated spectators.

“A great indicator (of support and interest) is the day that we were able to place tickets on sale, obviously due to the pandemic we had limited capacity in the venue, but the tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. and a little bit after lunch we were completely sold out,’’ Daniels said.

“That is a credit to not only the energy and passion that the region has around gymnastics, but also the efforts that were put forward by our partners in Huntsville to publicize the event to make sure that we were best positioned to do well.’’

The consensus was the arena would have sold as many tickets as were made available.

Samantha Nielsen, marketing and public relations manager at the VBC, said her group and the Huntsville-Madison County Convention and Visitors Bureau and Huntsville Sports Commission “were all in agreement that we would have sold out full capacity’’ if allowed.

The 2021 championships were scheduled for New Orleans’ Smoothie King Center, but the Big Easy was ruled out and the SEC went searching for an alternative.

David Knight of marketing firm Knight Eady, which has a close working relationship with the VBC, Sports Commission and the Convention and Visitors Bureau, heard about the relocation and quickly put the city and SEC in touch.

It didn’t hurt that Knight worked in the SEC office for nine years with gymnastics being one sport he was closely associated.

“We made it a priority to have gymnastics as one of our kinds of events or sports that we would conduct as a company,’’ he said prior to the championships. “So, the exciting thing about it is we’re hosting elite gymnastics in Huntsville.’’

The SEC quickly made the decision to visit Huntsville to assess the possibility of bringing the event to the VBC once New Orleans was deemed unfit.

“We found out that they were looking for another location about a week prior to the SEC group doing a site visit here,’’ Nielsen said. “So, in a week’s time our team at the VBC, Huntsville-Madison County Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Sports Commission and the City of Huntsville all came together. We got the hotels on board.

“We did a site visit with the SEC so that we could offer that we were all very excited and just tried to really show that the Huntsville community understood the importance of hosting an event like that in our community.

“I think within the next day or two they confirmed they were in fact relocating the event to Huntsville, and then we had roughly six weeks to get everything ready for the championships.’’

While many hands were key to pulling off the relocation, which Daniels said was decided by a committee, it was Knight who was the spearhead.

“David is a former colleague of mine here at the conference office,’’ Daniels said. “We’re very familiar with their work. When we found out that we were going to have to shift, we identified where we’d held the championship prior to coming to (visit) Huntsville as well as places that had expressed some interest.

“I do recall maybe six years ago visiting the Von Braun Center and thinking about gymnastics during that visit. And David Knight and his team do a phenomenal job from a support standpoint pulling all the pieces together, getting the right parties to the table to talk through bringing events such as this.’’

The teams were treated to atmosphere-building upon arrival. The squads were scheduled to arrive at different times in case the weather was bad. Not only that, but each team’s bus pulled inside the VBC’s South Hall where a wall lined with big screen TVs played individual and team highlights from the season as athletes yelled and cheered.

The South Hall also served as a dressing room area with a “bubble’’ in place to follow pandemic protocols.

Nielsen said it wasn’t easy getting prepared in a short amount of time, but said the VBC staff and crew are accustomed to quick turnarounds such as hosting a hockey game one night and a concert the next.

“As you can imagine it was very difficult,’’ she said, “but we have a great team here on staff who are used to dealing with large-scale events and working a lot of hours to turn the facility. It was interesting, and there were a lot of things we had to work through, but we came through it and it was a great event for everybody.’’

Mark McCarter, the CVB convention sales manager who is also an author and former distinguished sportswriter, said, “It was amazing to transform the VBC into a place that was as cool and spectacular as any other championship venue I’ve ever been to.’’

McCarter said Roots Woodruff, an associate athletic director at Alabama, told him the SEC should bring the championships back to Huntsville every “five or six years.’’

“Everything I kept hearing from the gymnasts to coaches to people in the conference was just how thrilled they were with how everything happened,’’ McCarter said. “To be considered to be on (the championship site) rotation with a smaller arena says a heck of a lot.’’