The Heart of the Game

Hey, I just saw this great film about a sassy high school student having a baby, and no, it wasn’t Juno. Ward Serrill’s documentary follows the fortunes of Seattle’s Roosevelt Roughriders through seven seasons of girls’ basketball, as a quirky, disheveled tax law professor takes the reins and applies his own hilarious but effective coaching approach to giving the game heart. But the story finds its focus with the arrival of Darnellia, a talented freshman who happens to be black in an overwhelmingly white school. What follows couldn’t be scripted, though it follows the template of every rousing sports story ever told. To say this isn’t quite a Hoop Dreams for girls is merely to say it isn’t one of the greatest films of all time, but still well worth seeking out. The dvd extras flesh out the story, to give it a little more of that epic scope. Like the excellent book In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle, this is, among other virtues, a paean to Title IX. See it. (2005, dvd, n.) *8* (MC-74.)