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Theatrical | Seven years in the making, THE HEART OF THE GAME captures the passion and energy of a high school girls’ basketball team and tells the incredible true story of one player’s fight to play the game she loves.

Directed by Seattle-based filmmaker Ward Serrill, this in-depth documentary not only illustrates the hard-charging energy and excitement of the game, but also captures the fiercely competitive and extraordinary spirit of a winning team.

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“Sink your teeth in their necks! Draw blood!” is the rallying cry of the Roosevelt Roughriders girls’ basketball team. Imagining themselves as a pack of wolves, the girls tear into opposing teams and stand together as warriors both on and off the court.

When Seattle filmmaker Ward Serrill met Bill Resler, a college tax professor who moonlights as a girls’ basketball coach, he didn’t realise that he was about to embark on an incredible seven-year journey. Serrill, camera in hand, followed Resler – who looks more like Santa Claus in Birkenstocks than a whistle-blasting high school coach – into the Roosevelt High School gym and soon discovered a group of girls whose unbridled toughness, passion and energy he came to call THE HEART OF THE GAME.

Then, one day, onto the Roughriders’ court (and into the film) walked Darnellia Russell – a tough, inner-city girl whose off-court struggles would eventually threaten to crash the star athlete’s plans to play college ball and be the first person in her family to get a college education.

At the center of THE HEART OF THE GAME is Darnellia’s unforgettable true story – the loss of her eligibility and her legal battle to get back on court to play the game that means everything to her. With Coach Resler, her team and her family standing by her side, she takes on enormous personal obstacles as well as the ruling body of high school sports in Washington State.