Sandy Stevens receives the Ed Aliverti Golden Microphone award from USA Wrestling President Jim Ravannack and Executive Director Rich Bender. Larry Slater photo

USA Wrestling has presented Sandy Stevens of Glen Ellyn, Ill. with the 2010 Ed Aliverti Golden Microphone Award, an new award which will be given annually to honor a public address announcer who has excelled in the craft and made a major positive impact on the wrestling community.

The award is named in honor of the late Ed Aliverti, the Hall of Fame public address announcer, who passed away this year.

“This is a special honor because I considered Ed a mentor as well as my friend,” said Sandy Stevens. “He taught me so much about the presentation of our sport, and the respect for the people involved.”

For more than four decades, Stevens has been a public address announcer for the sport of wrestling. She has worked hundreds of wrestling events, including the Olympic Games the World Championships, the NCAA Championships, the Junior Nationals and every other level of wrestling. The award will be presented each year at USA Wrestling’s World Team Trials event. 

Sandy and her late husband, Robert "Bear" Stevens, graduated from Northern Iowa, where he wrestled for Hall of Famer Bill Koll. When Bear became a high school coach in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1967, he asked Sandy to sit at the microphone, welcome people and assign wrestlers to the two mats. It was the beginning of her exceptional career as an announcer.

In 1971, Dave McCuskey and Gary Kurdelmeier asked her to announce the first USA Wrestling Junior Nationals at the University of Iowa. Since then, she has announced every single Junior Nationals ever held, except for one. The Junior Nationals assignment led to numerous other announcing opportunities on the national and international levels.

She has announced the NCAA Championships on all three levels. Starting in 1982, Stevens worked the NCAA Div. I Championships alongside Ed Aliverti, serving as an announcing team until Aliverti retired from college announcing. Stevens is still announcing the NCAA Tournament.

Stevens was also a partner with Aliverti at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Calif. and the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Ga.

Name an event, and Sandy Stevens has probably announced it at least once. She has done World Championships, Pan American Games, Senior National Championships, World Team Trials, the Midlands Championships, numerous state high school championships and so many others. She also currently serves as announcer for the National Wrestling Hall of Fame Honors Weekend.

She received the National Wrestling Hall of Fame’s Order of Merit in 1998, a special award voted on by Hall of Fame Distinguished Members which recognizes significant contribution to the advancement of wrestling, in areas other than success as an athlete or coach.

USA Wrestling is proud to celebrate the life of Ed Aliverti with this new award program. Aliverti made a tremendous impact on USA Wrestling and the entire sport for many decades, setting the standard for those who handling public announcing at competitions. He worked all of the major events in our sport, from the youth level through the Olympic Games. He was inducted as a Distinguished Member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1994.