'Believe' the message, not the details

The high school I attended was known for having the worst girls basketball team in the county.

Perhaps the state.

Maybe even the world.

A basket was a cause for minor celebration. A loss that wasn't embarrassingly lopsided was almost as good as a victory.

It hadn't always been that way, of course. My aunts told of days when the school's basketball programs won titles and Daddy coached the team to the county championship one year, which was then the highest goal girls were allowed to pursue. But by the time I was big enough to care, about the sixth grade, our team was terrible.

By 1978, that program would win a state championship. But the memories of those days -- when the ball was bounced rather than dribbled, defenders sometimes gave up and rebounds occasionally found noses -- came back during "Believe in Me."

The story of Oklahoma girls high school basketball coaching legend Jim Keith, an Oklahoma Coaches Association Hall of Famer, is filled with legendary stuff. His team picked cotton to buy new uniforms. He overcame his own prejudices. He learned, grew and found a new appreciation for the innate value of high school athletics.

That's a pretty good story.

But apparently pretty good isn't enough. Inspired by Keith's life, rather than a true retelling, the movie adds the town patriarch battling the new coach, a drought, the star player eloping and even the coach delivering a baby. And it changes the coach's name.

In the movie, Clay Driscoll (Jeffrey Donovan) comes to Middleton, Okla., to coach the boys basketball team. The coaching job is his first head coaching position, and he is completely undone when he discovers his contract says "basketball coach," not boys basketball coach. He is to coach the girls team.

His team is not just bad -- it is terrible. His methods drive away all but the most dedicated. But gradually, he learns how to coach. And he learns to appreciate the chance to influence a young person.

Driscoll is stunned to find his team in tears after a loss. They really care. These Oklahoma girls are more than the future wives of farmers and ranchers. They may cry in the dressing room after a loss but not because they aren't tough.

"Believe in Me" displays many of the lessons that are taught in high school athletics -- working together, working alone, pursuing goals, handling victory or defeat. The movie is touching enough to forgive some of the subplots, including the town Scrooge.

But don't pay too much attention to the details.

I called Diane Hanni Carter, who is a secretary at Sayre (Okla.) High and was a sophomore on the girls varsity basketball in 1960 when Keith arrived. The real team, it seems, wasn't as bad as the movie squad.

"We had a good team and one of the best dribblers in Oklahoma," she said. "We were not terrible. We could have won the state in '62 except one of our best players was sick during the playoffs."

Despite the liberties, the movie is a reminder of how high school athletics have changed, even in North Carolina. The N.C. High School Athletic Association didn't hold a state girls basketball championship until 1972. Nobody wanted to put too much pressure on the fragile female psyche. A county championship was about all the girls could handle. And, oh yeah, girls can't dribble more than three times and you can't expect girls to run the entire length of the floor so let's put three at each end.

It was pretty shameful.

"Believe in Me" really isn't about a coach coming to a new school and asking his team to make sacrifices, to believe in what he is teaching. It's about believing in athletics, and especially, the benefits of athletics for girls.