Win or Lose, It’s All in the Details

At a certain level, excelling in sports becomes really detail-oriented. When I was younger, I was always amazed by ABC’s Wide World of Sports television program that showed the dramatized inside look at the lives of athletes, especially into the lives of Olympic athletes since I have been obsessed with the Olympics for as long as I can remember (I originally thought I would go as a soccer player. Kudos to the 1996 U.S. Olympic women’s soccer team for inspiring many!). It was awesome to me to see how the lives of these successful athletes were 24/7 about their sport and then to see how after a bunch of blood, sweat, and tears later, everything finally came together in the end and they were successful, at the very least in their own eyes.

The past two months I have been traveling all over the world training and racing my bike. I have reached that point where it feels like my life could be a fairly engaging documentary. One of my training partners and I actually had a conversation based on this fact a few weeks ago. We discussed how we get up early, we ride to the track with our backpacks packed with the day’s necessities, we have a discussion over who’s iPod contains the most motivating playlist, we put that iPod on the stereo system, we ride efforts to the point of nausea, we adjust equipment to try to get the most speed out of ourselves, we try out the new and supposedly most technologically-advanced and fastest equipment, we discuss video feedback of the efforts we just did, we push ourselves even harder on the next efforts, we play cheerleader for our training partners and teammates who are just about on the point of not being able to do any more, we head out of the road for more hours of training, we come back to housing in the late afternoon and eat ridiculous amounts of food, we stretch and try our best attempts at recovery technique some of which include unique inventions of tight pants or humidity, we sleep, and then we start the same process all over again the next day. Some days we crash, and doesn’t that add even more to the appeal of a documentary?

The most interesting part of the actual documentaries to me was what happens after all the training and after the competition. No matter if training goes well or not, if the athlete meets the goal during competition or not, there’s always a reevaluation period. There’s always a flurry of questions as to what went well or didn’t? What could have been better? What can be improved upon next time? When you get to the point where your sporting life seems like documentary material, finding answers to these details consumes more time and effort than I thought was possible from watching the documentaries.

These past two months I took part in two national team camps and competed in two World Cup competitions. The camps went fairly well but my performances at the World Cups were not what were expected. Turn on the cameras; there have been some serious periods of reevaluation. There have been consultations with many people, the stuff ABC eats up. I have had to question all my preparations all the way down to the most basic, even where I live. I’m at that level now. There are checkmarks next to 24/7 and the blood, sweat, and tears boxes. Is there a checkmark next to the successful box? Only time will tell. For now that depends on the details.

www.kimgeist.com

Kick Like a Girl to air on HBO tonight

I screened a short documentary called “Kick Like a Girl” a couple months ago and was delighted to find out that HBO is airing it tonight (6:00 ET).  Anyone who sometimes feels jaded by the state of sports these days needs to tune in to the adventures of the Mighty Cheetahs, a third-grade girls’ soccer team in Salt Lake City.

After two undefeated, largely unchallenged seasons (with scores like 11-0 and 16-1), the Mighty Cheetahs decide to join the boys’ division in an effort to experience some real competition.

The move to the boys’ division makes sense in terms of sports skill. But it has repercussions for the league, particularly for the boys they play against. “Kick” takes a gentle look at how gender roles are stereotyped — and how parents sometimes have trouble looking past them. Sure enough, there are the soccer dads in the stands who have a hard time watching their boys lose to girls.

The documentary is as much a girl-power story of triumph as a sociological look at the different ways boys and girls approach practice, play and teamwork. We get to know the Cheetahs themselves – both their skill at the game and their views on soccer and life. It’s not so much about winning and losing as it is about teamwork and taking on challenges.

“Kick Like a Girl” was filmed and produced by the coach, Jenny Mackenzie, whose daughter, Lizzie, plays on the team and serves as the film’s narrator. Mackenzie obviously shares a close relationship with the girls allowing for some open, and incredibly realistic dialogue. In addition to being a volunteer youth coach, she is a social worker whose family is involved in the entertainment industry so helming a documentary film came somewhat naturally.

The last segment of the documentary tracks the Cheetahs through their first couple of games in the boys’ division, with enough on-field action to confirm that the Cheetahs belong there. They play well, with a remarkable grasp of teamwork.

The players interviewed have interesting things to say about how the Cheetahs triumphed by planning, passing and working together while the boys often lost because some insisted on hogging the ball in order stand out as a lone star.

Mackenzie interviews some of the boys, too, after their matches with the Cheetahs. Sure, they admit, it’s a little awkward at first to play against girls, but once the game starts, the only real issue is skill.

“If one of my friends say, ‘You kick like a girl,’ I’d be, like, ‘Yeah, that’s nice. Thank you,’ ” one of the boys says in the film.

“Kick Like a Girl” doesn’t pretend to document some dramatic gender divide. But it does suggest a few attitudes may have shifted.

I recommend this film to viewers of all ages, particularly older girls now competing at elite levels. It will remind them of why they started playing and how to celebrate the pure joy of a game well played. It would be interesting for the filmmaker to follow the players as they grow up and apply the lessons of the soccer field to high school, college and professional life.

Be sure to tune in tonight – it will be one of the most enjoyable 30 minutes of your day.

Girls band together in Girls Rock! documentary

March 07 2008 – After a brief round on the festival circuit Girls Rock!, opens in seven cities across the U.S. this week. The documentary film follows four girls of different ages from different parts of the country through their first year at Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls in Portland, Oregon. Check out the trailer now:

A raucous tale of female empowerment, the documentary became a three-year saga for Arne Johnson (co-director, co-editor, producer) and Shane King (co-director, co-editor, cinematographer), whose first collaboration was a Super 8mm movie in seventh grade.

Everyone knows boys easily conceive of themselves as budding rock stars when all they have is a few instruments, an amp, a total lack of musical knowledge and delusions of talent. Girls, the filmmakers learned, do not. In tracing the path of the leads through the transformative experience of rock camp, the filmmakers got a real education in what it’s like out there for girls. They discovered, among other things, what many books and studies have already described— that girls struggle with a bewildering and heartbreaking array of challenges to their self-image.

During the film’s long editing process, the girls who emerged as the center of the story include: Laura, a 15-year-old articulate Korean adoptee obsessed with heavy metal; Misty, a 17-year-old bass player emerging from a life of addiction, homelessness and gang activity; Palace, an adorable 8-year-old with a heavy metal sneer, and Amelia, an eccecntric 8-year-old writing a 14-song cycle about her dog Pippi. Over the course of a week, they learn to play instruments (or play them better), form bands, write songs and perform before an audience of hundreds.

Seeing this film for the music, however, is missing the point. Tackling the myriad of tasks, the featured girls and the rest of the camp engage in an experiment in empowerment that leaves no-one unchanged.

What at first seems simple – rock camp looks sort of like a cooler version of that nerd staple, band camp – proves to be extremely powerful. Learning to be comfortable with who you are – hardly an easy task for even the most self-assured girl – is what rock camp is really all about. Carrie Brownstein, guitarist for the indie-rock band Sleater-Kinney and one of the camp’s teachers, stresses to aspiring young musicians that they really can do it their way, not MTV’s.

Without being dull, the film intersperses footage from the camp with animated sequences that highlight relevant statistics about girls. It’s not a secret that ridiculously unrealistic female body images permeate the media or that girls’ confidence drops precipitously during puberty, but those facts take on new resonance when shown next to interviews with the girls about their experiences. Through video diaries, verite footage, revealing interviews, and issue-driven animations, filmgoers will transform right along with the girls.