Helen Hunt, center, plays volleyball coach Kathy Bresnahan in the film.
In August 2011, Caroline Found — a 17-year-old All-State volleyball player at West High School in Iowa City, Iowa — was killed in a moped accident on the way to visit her terminally ill mother, Ellyn, at the University of Iowa Hospital. Ellyn died 12 days later.
The grief-stricken community, especially West’s volleyball team, spiralled out of control, with Caroline’s former teammates either crying or trudging their way through practices. Coach Kathy Bresnahan wrote notes to herself every night, sorting through her own emotions and searching for ways to motivate her team.
Bresnahan’s book shows a team overcoming the loss of a star player.
Then something clicked. West went on a late-season run and won the state championship, which was Caroline’s preseason goal.
“The change was unspoken,” says Bresnahan, who turned those notes into The Miracle Season, a new book from Stevens Point-based KCI Sports Publishing that is now a movie with the same title starring Academy Award winners Helen Hunt as Bresnahan and William Hurt as Caroline’s father, Ernie Found. “They just knew what they had to do. It demonstrates to me that when a group of young people put their collective heads together, nothing can stop them.”
Bresnahan, a Cuba City High School alum who played volleyball and basketball at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville and has coached volleyball in Wisconsin and Iowa for 30 years, will sign copies of The Miracle Season at the University Bookstore in Hilldale Mall on April 14 from 11 a.m. to noon.
“Madison is one of the great volleyball communities in the state, and this story will really resonate with middle school and high school volleyball players,” says KCI owner Peter Clark, who sold the story rights to LD Entertainment.
The Miracle Season, with a screenplay written by David Aaron Cohen (Friday Night Lights), is showing at Point Cinema in Madison and Palace Cinema in Sun Prairie.
Bresnahan says she decided to write the book after the late sportswriter Frank Deford reported on the story for HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel in late 2012. Her straightforward, present-tense style makes for easy reading, and the coach’s personal connection to the story adds a level of intimacy another author would not be able to bring.
“This is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever experienced,” she says. “Not only because we won the state championship, but because of how the team changed the whole school’s attitude. Everybody was there for each other, and our other sports teams won state titles that year, too.”
Another KCI title, The Animal Keepers by Stevens Point Area Senior High School cross country coach Donn Behnke, also has been optioned to a film production company, according to Clark.
“The Animal Keepers and The Miracle Season are about the power of inclusion, and people can relate to that,” he says. “They’re positive stories, and its seems like we could use more of those these days.”
