Sink your teeth in their necks! Draw Blood! is
the rallying cry of the Roosevelt Roughriders
girls' basketball team. Imagining themselves as a
pack of wolves, the girls tear into opposing teams
and stand together as warriors both on and off the
court. When Seattle filmmaker Ward Serrill met
Bill Resler, a college tax professor who
moonlights as a girls' basketball coach, he didn't
realize that he was about to embark on an
incredible seven-year journey. Serrill, camera in
hand, followed Resler - who looks more like Santa
Claus in Birkenstocks than a whistle-blasting high
school coach - into the Roosevelt High School gym
and soon discovered a group of girls whose
unbridled toughness, passion and energy he came to
call The Heart of the Game. Then, one day, onto
the Roughriders' court walked Darnellia Russell -
a tough, inner-city girl whose off-court struggles
would eventually threaten to crash the star
athelete's plans to play college ball and be the
first person in her family to get a college
education.