'Off the Rez': 'Hoop Dreams' for Native Americans

By Sarah Sluis

Fictional sports movies have it tough. The narrative that repeats over and over again is that of the underdog team that comes from behind and wins the championships. Audiences are bored of this predictable plotline, but it's also the most satisfying story arc. Sports documentaries have a wonderful out: Everything they're covering actually happened. If they win the championships, great. If not, it doesn't matter, because the experience feels real and visceral. Every moment the players are behind or ahead feels that more intense because it was an actual game.

Off the Rez is the latest sports documentary from Jonathan Hock (Through the Fire), whose sports-centered non-fiction films have been a Tribeca Film Festival fixture. At a "Tribeca Talks" screening last night, viewers saw the movie for the first time. A panel followed that included the director, executive producers Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, and the stars of the documentary. Their candid, revealing responses provided insight into the filmmaking process that drove home the film's heartbreaking struggles and inspirational story.

The movie centers on Shoni Schimmel, a promising Native American basketball player who lives on the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon with her family. During her junior and senior years of high school, her family moves to Portland, Oregon, in order to give her a better shot at making it big and getting recruited by a top college. It's also a family story--her mother is her basketball coach, and her younger sister Jodi is her teammate. Her mother Ceci has an astonishing eight children, which helped the film get picked up by TLC. At the "Tribeca Talks" panel afterwards, TLC group president Eileen O'Neill wryly noted, "We do big families pretty well," referring to the channel's numerous shows featuring supersize broods.

Racism, too, factors heavily into the film. Shoni is the daughter of a Native American mother and a white father, a marriage that the community did not take kindly to at the time. Ceci, Shoni's mom, described the attitude around the Oregon reservation as "cowboys & indians," and that kind of prejudice persists in the community. The pressure for Shoni to perform well is amplified by the expectations of both her family and the community. It turns out that many Native Americans have excelled at sports, only to wither at their moment of promise, quitting college to return home to family or not understanding the "ticket" that such a scholarship can provide. Shoni's own mother was up for a scholarship but her coach encouraged recruiters to focus on her white teammate. As the moments tick down to make a choice for a college team, Shoni hesitates, then hesitates again, sending viewers like me into a fretting frenzy. Will she bow out? Does she have the courage to leave her community? Will she succumb to their pressure?

Off the Rez also includes a timely subplot: the subprime mortgage crisis. The family buys a house in Portland because it's cheaper to buy then rent, but their payments soon escalate. After hard times hit the family, the house moves into foreclosure. If Shoni was paralyzed by the decision-making process before, this added stress further delays her college choice.

Director Hock has ample experience with sports scenes, and it shows. Shoni is a miraculous player, with plenty of style and an ability to swoosh shots despite being heavily defended. The players are also incredibly expressive. As the moderator, Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger noted, "Girls are more fun than boys to watch because they cry constantly." He meant it as a half joke, but it's true. In the locker room after a loss, tears stream down the cheeks of athletes with aggressive on-court game faces. And why wouldn't you cry because you just broke a foot, had a knee jammed in your face, or can't breathe because you have undiagnosed mono?

Off the Rez is an edge-of-your-seat sports movie with heart. It also offers eye-opening accounts of racism and reservation life, along with a side of the mortgage crisis--you can't get any more topical than that! Catch it at the Tribeca Film Festival or when it airs on TLC as a two-hour special on May 14th at 9pm.