Review of The Heart of the Game (2005) by Don D — 29 Sep 2009

As a high school girls basketball coach I was excited to see this movie after hearing about it and reading reviews. It started out quite good with the eccentric coach and the underrated team. But it went predictable and annoying quite quickly.

As soon as the star, Russell, became the focal point it became hard to watch. Let me see...the kid with lousy attitude, bad grades, randomly misses practices, doesn't want to play with white kids, doesn't even know who the coach is on the first day of practice, gets pregnant, has a huge chip on her shoulder, is hugely high-maintenance, has a foul mouth, goes after and verbally abuses a fan who innocently tosses her a piece of candy, gets pregnant, misses her senior year (and then demands an extra year to play when she should be a freshman in college), drags the program through court - twice! Gag me! I hated this girl.

And when this team wins state, how does the other team feel playing a team with a star player who should be too old for school because of her own bad decisions? How many programs would win state by having their star an extra year? This kid was the worst example there possibly can be for student-athletes, and I would never recommend this for my players.

And while I am stealing numerous ideas from the coach (the animal motivational images for sure), he said it best when he said she is his best hope to become famous. Now that's what I call coaching for all the right reasons.

GAG AGAIN.