Parents get bright idea to light wrestling match with phones

ST. GEORGE, Utah -- A major power outage in St. George, Utah couldn't keep high school wrestlers from hitting the mat.

When the lights went out, parents and fans found a way to keep a tournament from being cancelled.

"The lights kind of flickered, and then they went out and we both kind of looked at each other like: Oh boy," Marcus Farnsworth told Good4Utah.com.

His son Shane had been prepping for the 4A Divisional Finals for a long time.

So, when the power went out in the building parents and wrestlers who traveled for hours to get to the match weren't going to be denied the chance to compete.

One by one cellphone lights started turning on.

"Instantly, people were pulling out their phone and it was bright," said Farnsworth.

The PA announcer, without his PA system, started shouting for fans to come down from the stands and surround the mat with their phones.

"It was a mass of people coming down all at once. It felt a little bit like a street fight to me," said Farnsworth.

"You could just feel the emotion and the intensity and electricity through the building," said wrestling coach Jarad Carson.

The excitement of wrestling in such a unique setting helped spurred Shane to victory.

"He realized he was going to wrestle in the dark with the lights shining like that, I could see his adrenaline. When he's excited, and his adrenaline is going, he's pretty unstoppable. And he won, pretty quickly," said Farnsworth.

The outage was reportedly caused by a failed connector. Power was restored later that evening.