hen Seattle filmmaker Ward Serrill met Bill Resler, a college tax professor who moonlights as a girls' basketball coach, he didn't realize he was about to embark on an incredible 7-year odyssey.

hen, one day, into the Roughrider's gym and into the film, walks Darnellia Russell — a tough inner city girl whose off-court struggles would eventually threaten to crash the star athlete's plans to play college ball and be the first person in her family to get a college education.

errill, camera in hand, followed Resler — who looks more like a Santa Claus in Birkenstocks than any kind of typical hard-driving whistle-blasting coach — into the Roosevelt High School gym and discovered there, in a group of girls, an unbridled toughness, passion and energy he came to call The Heart of the Game.

t the heart of The Heart of the Game is Darnellia's unforgettable and all-too-true story — the loss of her eligibility and her legal battle to get back on the court to play the game that means everything to her.

Her coach, her team and her family stand by her as Darnellia takes on the ruling body of high school sports in Washington State, an obstacle to her future and the team's shot at a state championship.

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