“Ladies First, Athletes second,” is what
Percy Page, coach of the Edmonton Commercial Graduate Basketball Club expected
of his team. Shooting Stars, directed
by Allen Stein, is a story of the Edmonton Grads basketball club based in
Edmonton which played the sport from 1915 to 1940. After graduating from commercial
school in Edmonton, Alberta, the girls wanted to continue playing the sport
they loved and with the help of their old coach Percy Page they became one of
the most up and coming club teams from the sport of women’s basketball. During
their span of 25 years, the team played 522 games and only ended up losing 20
of those games. A long with those 502 wins, the team won numerous tournaments
and worked together to bring back home 16 world championships.
Even
people like James Naismith, the creator of basketball, gave the team of women
some good inspiration by calling them “the finest team ever to step out on a
basketball floor”. This quote from Naismith couldn't come any closer to the
situation that was happening to them. They didn't have to resort to any fancy
tactics to help draw crowds. For 25 years, the Grads packed stadiums around the
world and in their hometown of Edmonton, becoming a phenomenon in the process.
During their success it occurred during a time of change for women’s sport. Shooting Stars manages to capture the
excitement of these women through one on one interviews, live footage from
their get together and finally the scenes of original footage of the team and of
the audience.
The
documentary also helped the viewers realize the evolution of the uniforms that
the teams wore during this period of time. At the start of the film, you see
the commercial graduate team wearing long cotton sleeve shirts with knee pads
and the combination of long socks. This becomes strong to viewers of the 21st
century because whether you are male or female, you wear shorts with a
sleeveless jersey and short or medium height socks. For the director, he got
the opportunity to show that because the Edmonton based team was new and still trying
to develop, they weren't at the same caliber when it came to modernizing their
uniforms as we saw when they played the team from Cleveland who wore cut off
shirts and low-cut socks. This creativity let the viewers realize about the
importance of time when it came to developing a club team and the importance of
their uniforms when the Grads walked out to their next tournament wearing more
modernized uniforms.
One
thing that Allen Stein made evident
in his documentary was the commitment of all 38 players who had the opportunity
to wear the jersey over the 25 year history. They lived and played the sport
with the pursuit of fair play and the pursuit of distinction. Even though they weren't getting paid like professionals, they were in my mind more committed to the
game, to their coach and to their fans. As we can see during the film was that
the fans gave back to the team with loud cheers and chants and by packing the
stadium each and every game like it was their job. In the film the players
speak of the pressure of their fans expectations. Showing their commitment to
loving the game and their fans, the girls would travel to small towns for exhibition
games. If you think of any sports club in the 21st century, it would
be rare to see a team travel to small towns to play exhibition games unless the
town was the winner of a contest such as the Hockeyville contest in the NHL.
Watching
Shooting Stars, one can`t imagine the
world of sport to be anything like this ever again. There`s no way as a sport
fan, you can ever imagine so much courage and commitment to a sport, especially
if you weren't getting paid like any of these girls were. Even in junior hockey
these days, kids’ age 16 to 20 years old are being paid to play the game they supposedly
love to play.
If you want to learn more about the Edmonton Commercial Graduates and view clips and interviews from real players of the Edmonton Grads, you can click on the links below with a real showing of the entire movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARTRfl9PF7Y (Part one)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnPWTdXsXaQ (Part Two)
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