{"id":294,"date":"2014-03-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/medora\/"},"modified":"2025-02-20T08:44:37","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T16:44:37","slug":"medora","status":"publish","type":"films","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/medora\/","title":{"rendered":"Medora"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Indiana, where life revolves around high school basketball, what happens to a community when their beloved team can no longer win a single game? Medora<\/strong>\u00a0<\/b><\/i>follows the down-but-not-out Medora Hornets varsity basketball team over the course of the 2011 season, capturing their stories both on and off the court. Riding a brutal losing streak when the film begins, the team\u2019s struggle to compete bears eerie resemblance to the town\u2019s fight for survival.<\/p>\n

An in-depth, deeply personal look at small town life, Medora\u00a0<\/i>is both an underdog basketball story and an inspiring tale of a community refusing to give up hope despite the brutal odds stacked against them.<\/p>\n

Years ago, Medora was a booming rural community with a thriving middle class. But the factories and farms have closed and the population has dwindled. Filmmakers Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart traveled to the tiny town after reading a 2009 story in The New York Times<\/i> about the struggles of the basketball team. The next fall, with the blessing of Medora High School and the local community, they began to document a year in the life of some of the players and coaches.<\/p>\n

The Hornets\u2019 three coaches are all volunteers who hold down full-time jobs as a cop, a preacher, and a stonecutter. Rusty Rogers, the six-foot, five-inch center, is virtually homeless due to his mother\u2019s problems with alcohol, and lives with point guard Zach Fish in public housing. Shooting guard Dylan McSoley wonders whether he should reach out to his dad, a man he\u2019s never met who lives in the next town over. Robby Armstrong, a farmer\u2019s son, wants to be the first in his family to complete high school, while Chaz Cowles, arrested on a gun charge, does his best to stay out of trouble with the law.<\/p>\n

While the film follows this particular team in this particular place, ultimately Medora<\/i> is a film about America, and the thousands of small towns across the country facing the same fight. As one resident observes, \u201cOnce we lose these small towns, we can\u2019t get them back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A community beset by a crippled economy and dwindling population is the setting for this documentary following a down-but-not-out varsity basketball team over a season. The team’s struggle to compete parallels the town’s own fight for survival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":9989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1293],"class_list":["post-294","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-youth-and-family"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMedora | Basketball in a Poor Town | Independent Lens | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A Midwest high school basketball team struggles over a season that parallels its economically-crippled town's own fight for survival.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/medora\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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