Game Film: Oneida
I made this in 2020. It's one of my favorite episodes from this series because it includes people with big hearts and pizza.
GAME FILM is a documentary series I co-created with 5Star Preps. It features the people and places behind high school football teams in East Tennessee.
This episode was from the first season in 2020. It’s hard picking a favorite but the experience I had making this one is as unique as they come (I was offered Honey Bun Cake on multiple occasions and saw a press box designed like a log cabin for the first time in my life, for example).
Oneida is a town of 3,000 people and if they could all fit into the stadium on Friday nights, they’d probably try. Everyone knows somebody on the team or knows somebody who knows somebody who played for Coach May and won State in 1991.
Going into these films, we usually had an idea of the story we’re going to tell but the beauty of documentary is that it’s a lot like life: what you expect rarely happens for better and for worse, either way, if you pay attention you can learn something new. We knew Kolby Morgan was the best player on this team and we’d heard that there had been an accident involving his brother, that his brother was alive but in the hospital and that Kolby was going to play on Friday. I’m usually hesitant to put a camera in someone’s face fresh off a tragedy but I think for Coach Lambert and Kolby, this game was about getting to go out and do something normal for once that week. I hope we honored them as they navigated this season. I know it revealed a bit of who they really are and I was thankful I got to spend an evening with them and capture some of it. The scene at the end of Coach Lambert loving on Issac through a FaceTime call with the team was one of those spontaneous moments that falls in your lap and you’re just glad you were there to see it.
“How do we face adversity?”
“Head on coach.”
Seeing a coach actually invest in his players as a man teaching young men is a gift of high school football and a reason I love this game.
Enjoy: