Believe in Me

I just saw a screening of this independent film at the Santa Barbara film festival. The screenplay is an adaptation of a novel written for juveniles, Brief Garland, by Harold Keith, which was first published in 1974.

The film focuses on the character of the coach of a girls' basketball team in a small town in western Oklahoma during his first years at the school in 1964-66. He arrives to coach the boys team, but is maneuvered into the coaching job for the girls. Over the course of the film, he learns how to coach the girls, and helps develop a competitive team at a school where girls' basketball had never been supported before.

I watched the film with particular interest because I played high school basketball in 1964-68 in Tennessee, where, as in Oklahoma, we played the six-on-six half-court game that most girls played until after Title IX was passed in 1972. I was disappointed to see that the girls in the film played the full-court five-on-five game, which is slower, messier, and lower-scoring than the half-court game we played. By playing with fewer players, the court was less crowded, and girls had more freedom to drive to the basket. Since defenders made long passes to move the ball upcourt to the offensive team, the speed from end to end was actually faster than the boys' game!!

Had the film's auteur truly appreciated the game that the heroines of the film actually played in the sixties, he may have created an even more exciting film, with less forced editing to simulate speed and grace.

I know, I know, you don't believe me. Oh well . . . .