Couple's passion shines through in documentary

Jack and Leslie Hamann, the husband-and-wife team who produced the documentary "Generation IX," were intimately connected with their subject to begin with: she was on UCLA's 1973 championship volleyball team; they've coached girls volleyball at Garfield High for about the past 10 years; and they raised a daughter and son who both played sports (she in college; he in high school).

And so their antennae have been tuned into how little is documented about girl athletes and, in particular, to this generation of female athletes born after the passage of the 1972 Title IX law. The winning UW women, they figured, would be great film subjects. The team's 2006 trip to China would make a good story. (Jack Hamann covered the trip as well as the 2006 NCAA Championships for The Seattle Times).

Before heading overseas, coach Jim McLaughlin had already agreed the camera could shoot his pre- and post-match talks to his players. That footage turns out to be some of the most engrossing that he captured.

In China, the Hamanns and cameraman/editor Greg Davis acted like flies on the wall. It was only after they returned to Seattle that they did their one-on-one interviews with the three players and their mothers. Fathers might have been included, Jack Hamann explained recently, if he had been making a longer film. Instead, he didn't want to overpower the film with too many characters.

They chose homegrown, telegenic, comfortable-being-on-camera players. (Candace Lee, the All-American libero, wasn't selected because she ended up not going to China, selected for the women's national training team at the time.) They shot in San Antonio, when the team won the 2005 national title; at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs; and at the players' homes. Thompson bantering with President Bush was captured as a fluke: A White House person forgot to shut off a microphone, and it was only afterward, when reviewing footage, that the filmmakers learned such a comic moment (Bush mistaking the "W" as representing Wisconsin) was now theirs.

Jack Hamann is a longtime broadcast journalist as well as an author. This is his 12th documentary, the first co-produced with his wife.

Jack Hamann, player Jill Collymore and her mother, Valerie Collymore, and Marie Tuite, an athletic director at the UW, will talk more about the documentary on the public affairs show "KCTS Connects," airing at 7 tonight. "Generation IX" follows at 8 p.m.

Postscript: Collymore is a sophomore; Christal Morrison is a junior and they both continue to play for the UW. Thompson, a senior, is currently finishing up her degree while training in Colorado with the U.S. Women's National Volleyball team.

Florangela Davila: 206-464-2916 or fdavila@seattletimes.com