Staff Stories: John Lukach
Go behind the screens of Cornell Athletics
By Grace DePaull
In a small control room tucked in the corner of Lynah Rink, high above the ice, fingers fly across keyboards as eyes stay fixed on glowing monitors. A crew of student producers clips instant replays and cues footage into place. In just 30 seconds, Cornell women’s basketball will tip off against Colgate in Newman Arena.
What was once a storage closet is now a nerve center of screens, cables, and controlled chaos responsible for every replay, stat graphic, and fan cam cutaway.
Moments before the broadcast begins, John Lukach, Cornell’s Associate Athletic Director, Video Production and Recruiting, is somewhere in the gym, troubleshooting a last-minute issue — just another moment in a day that rarely goes exactly as planned.
Long before live broadcasts and ESPN+ productions, Lukach was a self-described “band nerd” who discovered there was a production side to sports. That curiosity led him to a professional internship at a small Division I athletic conference in Boston, where he saw firsthand how storytelling, technology, and athletics intersect. When the internship ended, he applied for a job with the Ivy League — only to be turned down.
“So someone said, “Why don’t you throw your name in at Cornell?” he recalls. What followed was a leap of faith: stepping into Cornell Athletics as the first director of multimedia and production, fresh out of an internship and tasked with building something that largely didn’t exist yet.
“It was overwhelming at first,” Lukach says. “I was definitely taking a leap for this position, but I saw it as a good opportunity. I grew into it as I learned each of the roles that followed.”
Thirteen years later, that leap has helped transform how Cornell tells its athletic story.
Back in the control room, Lukach slips into his seat just as the first quarter gets underway. The broadcast rolls smoothly — no one watching at home would ever know how close the operation came to unraveling minutes earlier.
That seamlessness is intentional. Lukach’s role today extends far beyond what most people imagine when they think “video production.” The work begins days — sometimes weeks — before game day.
“There’s a lot of prep,” he explains. “Graphics, storylines, talking with commentators about what they want to highlight. We build video packages — fan cams, dance cams — and plan when to switch from the TV feed to internal camera shots. We’re updating sponsorship elements and updating the boards. It’s all connected.”
And that’s just the production side.
Over the years, Lukach’s role has evolved alongside the technology itself. What began as a position focused almost entirely on streaming has expanded into oversight of video boards, live events, creative services, ESPN+ broadcasts, and special university events. As part of the core group that launched Cornell Athletics on ESPN+ in 2018, Lukach worked behind the scenes to adapt systems and meet new broadcast standards while elevating Cornell’s productions and the Big Red’s story to a national stage.
“I used to say, ‘Give me four or five cameras, and I’ll do everything else myself,’” Lukach laughs. “And I did, for a long time.”
Football Saturdays, in particular, are a test of endurance. For a 1 p.m. kickoff, Lukach and his team arrive at 5 or 6 a.m., often putting in 17-hour days to ensure everything runs smoothly. But as video production at Cornell Athletics has grown (now streaming 24 of its 37 sports), so too has the need for leadership, delegation, and trust.
One of the biggest shifts in Lukach’s career has been learning when not to step in.
“For the first ten years, if something went wrong, it was always me fixing it,” he says. “Now, I let my staff try first. I walk them through it instead of just doing it. It’s not that I can’t fix it, it’s that I want them to know they can. If you take every opportunity thinking, ‘What can I learn from this?’ it’s going to make you better — at work and as a person.”
In recent years, Lukach’s role has expanded into sport administration. Now an associate athletic director, he oversees baseball and women’s rowing, supporting coaches and student-athletes.
“It’s the part of the job that’s kept me here,” he says. “I love going to practice, talking with student-athletes about their academics, and getting to know them as people and not just as athletes on a screen.”
While being present for student-athletes is central to his work, innovation has been a constant theme throughout his tenure. Known affectionately as the department’s “MacGyver,” he has built productions with limited resources, collaborated with IT and facilities teams to run fiber-optic cable across campus, and helped design a control room that powers multiple venues from Lynah Rink to Newman Arena and Schoellkopf Field.
But for Lukach, raising the bar isn’t about bells and whistles — it’s about access.
“In a dream world, we’d be streaming all 37 sports,” he says. “Every family deserves to watch their student-athlete compete. So I often ask, how can we take it to the next level? It comes down to collaboration — with campus partners and across the Ivy League — to make that happen.”
As the game unfolds on screen, the control room hums with focused energy. Lukach moves between monitors like a maestro conducting a symphony of lights, screens, and sound. He counts down to the next break, cues the commentators, checks the instant replays, and ensures every detail lands just right.
Looking ahead, Lukach hopes his legacy at Cornell is one of sustainability and growth — of systems built to last and people empowered to lead.
“Knowing that when I tune in to watch the Big Red, there’s a part of me that helped build that,” he says, “that’s special.”
The broadcast rolls on. Viewers at home never see the early mornings, the careful planning, or the behind-the-scenes problem-solving. But thanks to John Lukach, they feel the result — every time.