by John Noonan
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Basia Haszlakiewicz, Peaches, Monkey
Intro:
… an engaging and heartwarming tale about a bunch of courageous women who wanted to do something and didn’t feel the need to ask for permission anymore.
The National Women’s Football League (NWFL) was formed in 1974 in the US’s Midwest and would last until 1988, before ending with an underfunded whimper. At the start of the documentary The Herricanes, various contemporary female American football players are asked about their knowledge of the titular team. Most, if not all, not only don’t know the team but were unaware of the NWFL’s existence.
Filmmaker Olivia Kuan has a personal connection to The Herricanes, as her mother, Basia Haszlakiewicz, was a former team member. Up front, the director admits that, as a child, she assumed that everyone’s mum played football, but that was far from the case. The Herricanes, like the other teams, were something special: a dismissal of gendered norms around sport, a response to the passing of Title IX, and landmark legislation that opened up the doors to equal access for women in education and athletics.
Interviewing her mum about her footy years, Kuan decides to see if she can track down the team’s original lineup. This then becomes the excuse for the director to travel and interview those who made up the DNA of the Herricanes, including former players, coaches and even bitter rivals.
Over 90 minutes, The Herricanes reveals itself to be a bit of an underdog story. Despite growing up cheering for their favourite NFL teams, the original members who founded the team needed to learn how to play the game. So, a process of trial and error was taken onboard before they could enlist a coach. This meant that the team were going up against much more experienced players, and there were a few Herricanes who wonder what on earth convinced them to risk their unbroken bones on the field. Soon though, the Herricanes reputation almost began to precede them. In one apocryphal tale, sisters and teammates Monkey and Peaches were greeted at a game with two ambulances.
It all makes for great fodder about a bunch of trailblazers that sports history seems to have turned into a footnote. Kuan uses this potted history to look at how things have changed over 4 decades later, speaking to players who have carved their own careers in male-dominated arenas.
Strangely, for a documentary examining how many diverse women came together over their love of the game, The Herricanes seems to shy away from exploring anything too diverse. While one member broadly discusses realising that he was a man, the LGBT community feels like they are mentioned quite hurriedly; the aforementioned Peaches simply saying that lesbians in the team was something she had to get used to. In a film where the idea that women were bucking the trend of what it meant to be feminine, its reluctance to explore further what it meant not to be straight is noticeable. Particularly considering America’s current laser focus on women in sports.
With all that said, The Herricanes is still an engaging and heartwarming tale about a bunch of courageous women who wanted to do something and didn’t feel the need to ask for permission anymore.
