"The Heart of the Game" is a winning documentary

Q: Have you seen the documentary, "The Heart of the Game," about Roosevelt High School girls basketball? Is it good? When does the film open?

A: Release the balloons! Fire the rockets! Put on the party hats! This movie is a winner!

"The Heart of the Game" will open in Seattle on June 14 after opening in New York and Los Angeles earlier in the month.

I saw a preview showing last week, and it exceeded my expectations.

I'm not the only person who likes it. Roger Ebert, the planet's best-known film critic, saw it at the Toronto Film Festival and wrote that the film "could flower into a sleeper hit."

"The movie will inevitably be compared with 'Hoop Dreams,' the great 1994 documentary about two black inner-city basketball players recruited by a suburban powerhouse," Ebert wrote. "However, 'Heart of the Game' is more concerned with basketball and personalities and less interested in larger social issues."

And what personalities they are!

Roosevelt coach Bill Resler is a maverick professor of tax law at the University of Washington. There is a certain slapdash poetry to Resler, a guy who spent much of his time in college playing bridge instead of studying. He had three daughters and possesses a fervor for girls sports. He is a genuine character and coaches with imagination and an urgency and toughness reflected in team themes such as "Pack of Wolves."

The key player in the film is Darnelia Russell, a gifted black girl from the Central Area who enrolls at mostly white Roosevelt at her mother's urging. Russell is uncomfortable at first because she says she never has been around so many white people. She adjusts, but there is tension with an Ivy League-bound teammate.

Russell's biggest challenge occurs off the court because she misses the 2002-03 season having a baby. A ruling by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association declares her ineligible to play as a fifth-year senior. Russell wins a temporary court ruling that allows her to play.

The final season of the film ends with the biggest of possible victories — the Roughriders' 55-52 triumph over rival Garfield for the 2004 4A state title. Resler shakes the dice and plays all 12 girls in the high-stakes game. His reasoning: Each girl deserved to play because they stuck by Russell even knowing that a championship could be taken away if the WIAA won its case on appeal.

After the championship, the WIAA dropped its appeal.

The film was a seven-year project for Ward Serrill, 49, a former accountant turned filmmaker. He admits that there were times when he hit rock bottom.

"I like to say I had to go into fetal position about six times," he joked last week in a telephone interview from the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

His finances were drained, too.

"By the end, I was more than $200,000 in debt," he said. While filming "The Heart of the Game," he supported himself by working for a company that made documentaries and short promotional films for organizations.

The debt would have been deeper had not there not been more than 200 donations ranging from $10 to $30,000 from people who believed in the project.

Serrill is out of debt now because Miramax, a division of Disney, paid an undisclosed sum to acquire the film's North American distribution rights.

Serrill caught some enormous breaks during the project.

"There was pixie dust all over this thing," he admitted.

One break was Russell, a basketball Mozart, choosing Roosevelt.

"When Darnelia Russell walked into the gym one day, I remember saying to myself, 'I've been waiting for you,' " Serrill has said.

Another break is that Roosevelt won the state title, giving the documentary a happy ending worthy of fiction.

A third break was that Serrill's camera was rolling at a player's home on a day when Tony Giles, that player's offseason select-team coach, called to flirt.

The player excuses herself from the camera and leaves the room. In a scene a few years later, the player is in court and Giles is on trial for taking sexual advantage of her. He was convicted.

Serrill had total access to the team and shot 200 hours of film from 1998-2004, then boiled it to the 98-minute documentary. It is rated PG and there is some profanity.

The film has a lot of nice touches. One of them is that the arguments against giving Russell the extra year of eligibility are expressed by callers on Dori Monson's radio show on KIRO-AM while a car drives in the city.

Serrill and his camera were as ever-present at Roosevelt games over the six-year span as the team's first-aid kit. The camera caught heart-ripping losses, joyful triumphs and the hard work of practice. Coaches and players didn't know what the result would be, but they have to be pleased.

Resler said, "When I saw the movie, I was stunned."

Asked for an update on Russell, Resler said she dropped out of community college this spring but intends to resume her studies this summer. She was co-MVP this winter of the North Division of the Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges.

"The Heart of the Game" has nationwide appeal as a sports film, especially for female athletes and their parents. The film will bring nationwide attention to Washington basketball.

In these parts, brace yourself to hear about the film from your friends who went to Roosevelt or have a connection to the school. Prepare to be told that Roosevelt is on the national map and the schools where we went, or our kids go, don't share that status.

And you know what? They're going to be right.

Have a question about high-school sports? Craig Smith will find the answer every Tuesday in The Times. Ask your question in one of the following ways: Voice mail (206-464-8279), snail mail (Craig Smith, Seattle Times Sports, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111) or e-mail csmith@seattletimes.com