Three Sports Docs to Add to Your Binge-List
Ah, the dog days of summer. Perfect for the… *checks newsfeed* … start of the NHL and NBA playoffs? Heck, we’ll take it at this point after endless rebroadcasts of classic games in pretty much every major sport. One of the few things that ensured I was able to get my sports spectating fix during the height of the lock down was sports documentaries.
Just because most sports are back up and running with varying degrees of success (sending concerned looks your way, MLB), it doesn’t mean one still can’t find time for a good ol’ sports doc. And there are many out there these days. For instance, ESPN pushed forward their release of The Last Dance, as well as a number of new 30 for 30s. However, these three stood out to me during the height of stay-at-home social distancing, and are worth a watch if your favourite team is eliminated from the playoffs, your baseball team gets rained out (or contracts COVID-19 en masse), or the mood just so happens to strike you.
Cheer
I’m sure most of you have already seen this Netflix hit, which was released earlier this year, spawned multiple memes, and increased the social media footprint of already popular Gabi Butler. Essentially, the six episode docuseries follows the Navarro Texas junior college cheer team, who are a 14 time repeat national cheerleading champion. The series focuses on the 40+ member group as they prepare for “Daytona,” which is the National Cheerleading Championship held in Daytona Beach, Florida, each year.
Whether you view cheerleading as a ‘sport’ or not (and after watching this series, you’d be hard pressed to argue that it isn’t), Cheer is well worth the watch. It includes Monica Aldama, a Belichickian coach whose hard driving, take no prisoners approach to training is balanced with her ‘off mat’ tenderness, often serving as a parent figure to her athletes and a beacon of acceptance and tolerance in a deeply conservative part of the country that is not always gay friendly to a sport with many gay athletes. The cheer team members that the show follows in more depth tell their often heartbreaking stories for all to see. You really start to root for each and every one of them.
It also outlines the history and development of cheerleading from this:
To the two billion dollar industry that looks more like this:
And perhaps most importantly, it shows just how talented and just how tough these athletes are. The gravity defying routines that the Navarro team attempts in each and every episode are jaw-dropping to say the least. Just as notable is the sheer physicality of the sport. The sounds of ‘flyers’ being tossed and caught are not pleasant, no protective equipment is worn, and the injuries sustained by the team members are shocking in both their severity and their frequency of occurrence. Director Greg Whiteley, who also directs the similarly produced junior college football docuseries Last Chance U called the Navarro cheerleading team the toughest athletes he’s ever filmed. In fact, the pressure placed on the athletes in Cheer to continue to practice through injuries is one of the biggest criticisms of the show, as well as the coaching staff.
The show ends with a thrilling finish, which I won’t spoil for you. Currently streaming on Netflix.
Athlete A
Also from Netflix, Athlete A is well worth watching. In this approximately two hour documentary, the investigation of the USA Gymnastics program by the Indianapolis Star newspaper is laid bare. Similar to Cheer, a win-at-all-costs culture is shown to permeate USA gymnastics. However, the cost in this case is horrendous. The documentary shows how former team doctor Larry Nassar used his position to sexually abuse the underage girls in his care, the pain that it caused for the athletes involved, and the disgraceful attempt to brush everything under the rug by the top level of the organization, including by USA Gymnastics CEO Steve Penny.
Because of the subject matter, this documentary is a heavy one with many parts that are difficult to watch, to say the very least. While Nassar was put behind bars for his most heinous of crimes for up to 175 years, the most powerful part of this documentary comes in the manner in which justice is served by giving a voice to the more than 250 victims.
In terms of a toxic culture, women's gymnastics appears to stand out in a bad way. What makes this particularly concerning is the age of the athletes, as the Olympians in the program are as young as 16, and start training with the national program at even easier ages. For an in depth look at these troubling aspects of the sport, ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcast series Heavy Medals on Bela and Martha Karolyi’s rise to the top of the USA Gymnastics coaching and training ranks is well worth a listen.
Being Serena
The third recommendation comes in the form of HBO’s 2018 Being Serena, which follows the G.O.A.T. tennis player as she discovers she is pregnant on the eve of the Australian Open. Although this documentary has faced similar criticism to The Last Dance in that the main subject has had a heavy influence in production of the documentary, it is worth watching even if just for the candid and intimate view on the physical toll that pregnancy and childbirth takes on even the highest of high level athletes. I felt that it really showed the challenges Serena faced with regaining her pre-pregnancy level of performance. It is an aspect of life that is too often overlooked in the typically male dominated world of sports and sports journalism.
Being Serena is available through HBO’s streaming services.
