Sport Stories Worth Watching

10 sports documentaries celebrating their 10th anniversary this year.

If your team isn’t in the thick of a postseason run you might be up for a little change of pace. Or, if the playoffs are too much, this could be just what you need to break the tension. Watch these 10 sports documentaries celebrating their 10^th anniversary this year. See them for the first time. See them again for the first time. In chronological order, they are …

Keepers of the Game is about the members of an all-Native American girls lacrosse team fighting for acceptance on every level: within the tribe, at their school, and in the larger community. They want to play a game that was historically a boys’ and men’s game, they do this with no financial support from their school system, and against a heated rival who looms large on the schedule. It starts slow, but it becomes downright cinematic. Keepers of the Game was an official selection at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was nominated for an Emmy, won an award at Cannes and, in just 88 minutes allows us to see sometimes hesitant kids become confident athletes. Isn’t that what we want out of youth sports?

The Cleveland sports curse persisted for 52 years, a dry spell running from 1964 to 2016. (So if your teams aren’t in playoff contention right now, it could be worse.) Believeland aired in May of 2016. ESPN was hoping to cash in before King James inevitably rendered all the footage obsolete. The Cavs won the 2016 NBA Finals just 32 days later after it aired. A few weeks later, ESPN aired a version with a new ending, the exciting 3-1 come-from-behind series win. Between Believeland and the Cavs triumph, though, local man Stipe Miocic won the UFC Heavyweight Championship and the American Hockey League’s Lake Erie Monsters won the Calder Cup. We leave it to you to decide which was the greater inspiration for the Cavaliers.

If your team is in a Cleveland-esque slump, take your mind entirely off sports for the astounding O.J.: Made in America documentary. At times grim, horrific, enlightening, and always engrossing, this is worth your time. It says as much about modern society as it does the man, his gloves, or legal happenings. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and had a limited theatrical run before making its way to ESPN as a five-part series. It won awards from industry peers, critics, festivals and, ultimately the Academy Award for best documentary feature. If you’ve watched this before, you’ll know still more after another viewing.

You don’t have to know a lot about road cycling to appreciate the effort involved. Le Ride is a documentary that works on that level. This film recreates the 1928 Tour de France. Two modern amateurs on period bikes tracing the entire 3,500-mile stage race. This is, if you haven’t ridden a bike since you were a kid in your driveway, physically demanding and daunting. Only 25 percent of the 1928 field finished their version of Le Tour. Can the guys at the heart of the film survive?

Steve Gleason played in the NFL for eight years, but his biggest challenge came when he was diagnosed with ALS. Gleason is a touching documentary that earned its way into the hearts of festival goers everywhere and was nominated for the top documentary prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It will absolutely sit in your mind and in your heart, in the most positive ways.

Who is the Olympian you think of if we say “the 1936 Berlin Games” …. Jesse Owens, sure, but Olympic Pride, American Prejudice, reminds us of the other Black Americans who helped set the stage for future generations of athletes and social growth. The film uses archival footage, modern scholars, surviving family members and contemporary Olympians to tell this powerful story of 18 Olympians, including Tidye Pickett, the first African-American woman to compete at the Olympics. Together, they won eight gold, four silver and two bronzes medals in Nazi Germany, only to come home and be disregarded again. It is a powerful film.

Ice Guardians is about the most fearsome guys at the rink, the enforcers. Hall of Famers Bobby Hull, Brett Hull, Chris Chelios, and Jarome Iginla are here, and you’ll also hear from greats like Dave Brown, Glen Cochrane, Dave Schultz, and more. It all comes together in what Sports Illustrated called it’s Best of Film in 2016. Newsweek agreed, tapping it as their favorite documentary that year.

You can’t have a best of sports list without counting Da Bears somewhere in there. And ‘85: The Greatest Team in Football History is a film almost worthy of that team. Great in their own way, and in every other way, they redefined football, and then it all slipped away. This isn’t the greatest documentary on the list, but it is a fantastic time capsules of the 1980s.

ESPN was hitting a real stride in the documentary format in 2016. Hit It Hard is definitely a part of that. John Daly was a fixture on the course for his skill with the big stick, and then became almost a caricature. And then a fixture and then some other things along the way, and all of it front of the watchful gaze of unblinking cameras and enthralled fans. Is it possible to cluck-cluck your way through a film where you’re also rooting for the protagonist? John Daly lets you do that, and you see him hit it hard.

How can a single college football game almost 40 years gone by have a nickname? Inspire some of the most heated rivalry in sports, and then, later, earn a documentary that’s so colorful and vibrant that, if you saw this when it aired in December of 2016, you remember it, a decade later? It can only be Catholics vs Convicts

Set up your queues, make yourself a movie night, and let us know which one is your favorite documentary, and tell us what we should watch next.