The documentary and filmmaking class will also premiere “The Legend of Jack Gohlke,” a story about the Hillsdale College basketball player who graduated in 2023. Courtesy | CNN
Students in the documentary filmmaking class will premiere two films about Hillsdale sports legends along with shorter student projects April 15 at 7 p.m. in Plaster Auditorium. The films are “The Year of the Charger” and “The Legend of Jack Gohlke.”
The night will begin with “The Year of the Charger,” which will tell the story of the 1985 Charger football team — the only football team to win a national title in school history. Junior Sydney Green worked as an assistant editor on the project along with senior Carly Moran, sophomore Skye Graham, and junior Eleanor Whitaker, who directed the project.
“The other film students and I have been working hard to share both of these untold stories and are very excited for their premiere next Tuesday,” Green said. “I think it’s important to remember that even though these are both sports documentaries, these are ultimately films about people and we hope to capture that in both of our films.”
Course instructor and Lecturer in Journalism Buddy Moorehouse said the class chose the topic because this year marks the 40th anniversary of the national championship. The class also noticed another bit of fascinating historical symmetry as the project developed.
“We realized eventually that the national championship back in 1985 was the 30th anniversary of the famous Tangerine Bowl dilemma,” Moorehouse said. “These two stories are part of a great legacy in Hillsdale football.”
In 1955, Hillsdale College was invited to play in the Tangerine Bowl with the stipulation that its black players would not be allowed to compete. The team voted unanimously to decline the invitation.
Following the premiere of “The Year of the Charger,” the filmmakers will hold a brief panel to answer questions from the audience about the film and how the story came together. Moorehouse also said some players from the 1985 national championship team plan to attend the premiere.
“That could be a good full-circle moment,” Moorehouse said. “It will be fun for them to relive part of their career at Hillsdale.”
The class will also premiere “The Legend of Jack Gohlke,” a story about the Hillsdale College basketball player who graduated in 2023. He had one more year of NCAA eligibility and became a March Madness hero after leading the Oakland University Golden Grizzlies in an upset victory of the Kentucky Wildcats in the first round of last year’s tournament.
“The idea of the film came from a goal to capture important Hillsdale figures,” junior Joe Johnson, an assistant director for the film, said. “Gohlke is one of those figures. He’s a Hillsdale man who should be remembered and celebrated for his accomplishments.”
Johnson said the students each took on a different role that played to their strengths.
“We learn how to research and conduct in-person interviews with key sources,” Johnson said. “From that we built an outline of the historical story, which ultimately is revamped and polished in the editing room.”
For “The Legend of Jack Gohlke,” students interviewed Gohlke in March, when he was playing for the Detroit Cruise, the G-League team under the Detroit Pistons organization. Johnson and junior Jacob Beckwith, the director of the film, drove eight hours to Gohlke’s hometown of Pewaukee, Wisconsin, to interview the basketball player’s parents and a former Hillsdale teammate who was in the area. Juniors Carolyn Spangler and Emma Verrigni also worked on the film as assistant editors.
“We found a ton of really high quality b-roll, and we were super lucky to be so close to him to set up an interview,” Moorehouse said. “We wanted to jump on this before ESPN did, and I think it’s really special that Hillsdale College students get to tell Jack’s story.”
