While the Washington College Men’s Basketball season ended in late February with a loss to Franklin and Marshall’s Diplomats, there is editing work yet to be done for local film maker Kurt Kolaja, who made documenting the Shoremen his raison d’être this winter.
As of now, the material for his forthcoming film “D III” exists in a series of short vignettes, which Kolaja has distilled into a preview that will be showing at this year’s KICK film festival, this Saturday, April 22.
Like some of Kolaja’s previous efforts, such as “Band Together”, about the Kent County Marching Band, the material for this project is marked with Kolaja’s idiosyncratic wit and quirky insights into the world of the ordinary.
Thus, the “D III” material shows Kolaja’s expertly shot footage of the Shoremen’s highs and lows on the court deftly woven in with personal interviews of players, the coach, and various members of the custodial and laundry room staff. In short, Kolaja gives us much, much more than a conventional sports team doc, serving up something between Erroll Morris, Studs Terkel, and ESPN.
“Sometimes you think you’re doing all their laundry,” said Missy Ourf in a vignette titled “Sweat”. Informing the camera that she has worked for the college for twenty years, Ourf currently manages the laundry for all of Washington College’s sports teams.
“Eighteen, nineteen dudes throwing all their laundry into a cart, it gets stinky too probably,” said one freshman player, pensively.
“We wear our gloves, and we need to sometimes put clothespins on our noses, because sometimes it gets pretty rank,” continues Ourf, candidly adding that she “by mistake” put their laundry on the tablecloth cycle, starching the whole team’s jock straps.
Director’s Commentary
In “D III” Kolaja wanted to make a film that focused on the relative simplicity and innocence of the D-III sports world, celebrating the love of the game and the intimate community surrounding the players, rather than the talent scouting contract wielding recruiting culture of D-I.
“There’s a notion out there that division three athletics is little more than intramural sports, its looked down upon as “lesser than”. There’s Duke and Kentucky and the big boys, but these guys play just as hard, they sweat, and if they roll an ankle it hurts just as much,” said Kolaja.
“They are working, they are playing, they are also going to college. I would think the viewer could take off the WAC jersey and put on a Gettysburg jersey. The story goes beyond the team.”
In the wake of the Penn State controversy, Kolaja offers up perhaps an idyllic portrait of what sports culture should be, focusing on the positive and often humorous relationships that define a season in Anywhere Liberal Arts College U.S.A.
“There is so much attention that is paid to things that are wrong in colleges,” said Kolaja, “but its not all bad out there in the world of college sports.”
Kolaja expects the fully polished, final version of “D III” to be ready by next winter. In the meantime, however, you can check out that material and more here. And don’t forget to catch his special preview screening of “D III” this Sunday at the KICK film festival.
D-III will be shown at 7:30 PM, along with Hoop Dreams, on April 22 at the Garfield Center for the Arts. Tickets are free to kids and students. Adults are asked for a $10 donation.
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