Meet the woman bringing the invisible Jets crowd to life

How do you make an empty arena sound like it’s brimming with crazed hockey fans? Priya Plested, coordinator of game presentation at Winnipeg Jets games, is quickly becoming an expert. Alex Karpa has more.

By Alex Karpa

WINNIPEG — Do you ever wonder how there is crowd noise during Winnipeg Jets home games without any fans in the stands? We went behind the scenes at Bell MTS Place to find out.

Meet Priya Plested. She’s the coordinator of game presentation at Jets games.

She’s more commonly known as “the sweetener” and her job is to add crowd noise to make home games sound like there’s a loud crowd cheering on the Jets.

“I’m responsible for all the oos, the ahs, just trying to make the game as real as possible,” said Plested.

“We have a program that has all the sounds in it and we use a trigger board to make it a little easier in how to fire all the sounds at a certain point of the game.”

Priya Plested is the coordinator of game presentation at Jets games.

This is Plested’s second year working with the Jets.

Due to COVID-19, she is the only person allowed to hype up the teams — which is quite a taxing job.

There are more than 15,000 people at each Jets home game in a normal year, which makes it usually one of the loudest buildings in the entire National Hockey League.

Plested says this can be intimidating at times, but she has 58 sound effects to choose from in order to create the whiteout ambiance.

“So, we do have the True North chant of course and of course we have different types of cheers from like lower to like more clapping. It’s about finding the right one for the right moment because each one is different of course,” she said.

Sound effects are colour-coded and Plested has had to memorize what sound each colour is.

“The first game was very nerve-wracking. You know, not many people have done this before and it’s new for everyone. But in the end, we won, and everything turned out well.”

Plested says she trained herself by mimicking crowd noises and sound effects by watching games on mute. She says it’s been a challenge at times but enjoys every minute of it.

“The fact that I get to speak for the fans and make it as real as possible for both the fans and the players… I like that it helps them out a bit,” she said.

“I’m filling in for now and hopefully one day we can have the fans back in the building. Until then, I’m going to do the best I can to represent our fans.”

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