Twenty Years in the Making, New Film "After the Game" Is Worth the Wait
Twenty Years in the Making, New Film "After the Game" Is Worth the Wait
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In the winter of 1999-2000, April Abeyta was a senior basketball player at Chapman University, a Division III school in Orange, California. She led her team in scoring and rebounding that season, averaging a double-double with 15.4 points and 12.4 rebounds per game.
Abeyta was also a film student, blending her passions on and off the court by filming her team’s ups and downs as they chased a berth in the Division III NCAA Tournament. “I wanted to show just a real intimate look at a women’s competitive athletic team,” she explained in a recent interview, “… that heart and passion and fire and want to do well.”
Abeyta downplayed her own on-court contributions, saying only that it was “unavoidable” that she was “in some of the action shots.” (I didn’t realize she was a starter—let alone a star—until I checked the stats.) Because playing sometimes precluded her from filming, she also praised the small village of people who helped record games, practices, and all of the other moments that make up an entire season. “It was pretty much anybody that I could find,” Abeyta recalled, from friends to teammates to the athletic trainer.
In college, Abeyta used the footage to create a trailer for an academic project, but she did not finish a full film. Twenty years later, After the Game: A 20 Year Look at Three Former Athletes is set to premiere on March 26. In Abeyta’s words, the goal of the film is to “introduce young people, young girls in particular, [to] all these powerful things that sports can do.” It features two of her teammates, Michelle (McMillen) Ruzzi and Polly Neves, and her coach, Mary Hegarty, during the 1999-2000 season and in the present day.
Ruzzi, a senior point guard in 1999-2000, is shown battling for playing time after three years of limited minutes, then battling to get her second business off of the ground nearly 20 years later. Neves, a junior transfer in 1999-2000, worked so hard at Chapman to fit in and contribute to a new team; 20 years later, she is considering whether to leave her longtime employer and try to prove herself at a new company. Rounding out the film is Hegarty, who Abeyta told me was “meant to be a coach” because of her ability to inspire players. However, Hegarty left coaching a few years after the 1999-2000 season and moved into an academic support role at a community college, and the film shows her mulling where she fits best in higher education administration. (Hegarty was also an All-American at UCLA in the 1980s, so her journey can be viewed through the lens of a former player as well.)
The film identifies several examples of how its stars’ athletic experiences parallel the decisions and challenges they face after basketball. For example, Neves equates accepting a new job with facing “a different defense.” “There’s an offense for every defense,” she says. “… You have to be agile enough to adjust.” Later in the film, Ruzzi’s business partner, Robert McCoy, speculates that her experience as a point guard is beneficial in the business world—and there is some data to support his assertion. According to research by the financial services firm Ernst & Young, 52% of C-suite women played college sports, compared to 39% of women at lower levels of management, and over 60% of women who are former athletes say that playing sports contributed to their career success.
Similarly, Abeyta credits basketball with teaching her some of the skills to be a successful filmmaker. Before her senior season, “I wasn't where I wanted to be as a player and so it was putting in the work and being patient and knowing when it was time to take advantage of opportunities,” Abeyta reflected. “And I just see parallels with … that type of mindset in this film as well: sitting on it at times, thinking about other times, and then knowing where the opportunity came up and being ready to jump on it.”
As Ruzzi, Neves, and Hegarty’s lives progressed after Chapman, the concept for the film had to evolve with them. Abeyta says that she initially prioritized other career opportunities ahead of turning her senior project into a full-length film. She started her career as a day-of-air coordinator at Fox Sports Network in 2000, and five years later, she founded a post-production company, Event Edit, specializing in recruitment videos for aspiring college athletes. “The way that [After the Game] evolved over time,” Abeyta explained, “was just as I maintained these relationships … [and saw] how they, in most cases really subconsciously, lean on their confidence-building or the experience they had through athletics to try to overcome their other personal problems or professional challenges.” Abeyta began working on this idea in earnest again in 2017 as Ruzzi, Neves, and Hegarty’s paths all seemingly converged around this theme.
Part of the reason Abeyta was able to be so patient in making this film over twenty years is that her priorities never wavered. Basketball came first, filming second. One scene in After the Game features Neves talking to the camera in a hotel room during a long road trip. As Abeyta describes it, “It’s this moment where she’s just getting fatigued in the season, and she talks about drama” within the team. But Abeyta didn’t film any arguments or push for details. “As a filmmaker, definitely you are looking for the drama,” she said. “… [But] because basketball was my priority—and also just my friendships with them, that was my priority—I wasn’t willing to sacrifice team chemistry or trust with the team for a flash-in-the-pan dramatic moment.” Abeyta also instructed those who helped her film to comply with any requests to turn off the camera. “This was my team first,” she said.
After the Game can appeal to a wide range of people, including current and retired athletes, university administrators, teachers, coaches, and sports fans of all ages. But Abeyta pinpointed another target audience: parents, particularly those who are perhaps too invested in their children’s performance. She hopes the film will be “a tool to just think about what the point of sports is for their kids. … There's too much focus at times on that kid getting a [Division I] scholarship or trying to go pro or getting the most playing time. It's about so many other things. So we really do hope that there's a way to get this specifically in front of parents.”
Whether you’re a parent, athlete, fan, or coach, it is worth it to watch this film. High school and college coaches often talk about preparing their players for life after the game, but that can be hard for a player to truly understand at that stage of life. After the Game offers the clearest illustration I’ve seen about the benefits of playing sports growing up—regardless of whether a player’s ultimate prize is a college scholarship or a youth league participation trophy.
The first people to see the film will be Abeyta’s teammates and others in the Chapman community. The university will host a “sneak preview” screening on March 12, and Ruzzi, Neves, and Hegarty will all attend. Abeyta expects to sell out both the sneak preview and the premiere, which will take place on March 26 at the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland, California. Additional screenings are planned for later this spring and will be announced on the film’s website; the producers are also looking into options to allow people to rent the film online.
The film closes with a message that appropriately summarizes not just Chapman’s 1999-2000 season, but also the film’s evolution since its stars embarked on their post-playing careers. “You’re gonna face difficult things,” Hegarty says to the viewer. “It’s not going to be easy, but I promise you, you can do hard things. And every one of us has made mistakes, every one of us has needed help … I’m not gonna say it’s going to be easy, but I promise you it’s going to be worth it.”
For updates from the After the Game team on where and how to watch the film, visit the website or sign up for the After the Game newsletter.
Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter. If you like our work, be sure to check out our stats site, our podcast, and our social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.