We've all heard about Hoosiers, or stories like it, in which a high school team from a small town overcomes all odds to win a state championship.
These days those stories are becoming increasingly infrequent, as America's small towns struggle to compete with its booming metropolises. More often, high school teams in rural America are competing with themselves.
Medora, a new documentary from directors Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart, examines the journey of a high school basketball team in the struggling city of Medora, Ind. The Medora Hornets, chronicled in this 2009 New York Times feature, racked up a years-long losing streak as the team's players dealt with unthinkable off-the-court issues.
The day after reading that New York Times feature, Cohn and Rothbart drove from Ann Arbor, Mich., to Medora to check out the town and the team. Here's their statement:
"We were struck by Medora's eerie, beautiful silence and stillness, and by the kindness and openness of the people we met. It felt like we'd traversed not only a couple of hundred miles south but also a couple of decades back in time. At the end of the night, standing in a gentle snow on empty Main Street, we looked at each other, and agreed: As passionate basketball fans, documentary film junkies, and proud Midwesterners, a movie about Medora was the one we were born to make."
The film debuts in theaters Nov. 8 and will be released on VOD and iTunes on Nov. 12.
