Sue Bird And Megan Rapinoe Produce New Short Film Series About Female Athletes
“Unstoppable” pulls back the curtain on returning to sports after childbirth, injury’s emotional toll, systemic inequities in nutrition, and the realities of aging.
Featured Image: Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird, former pro athletes and founders of A Touch More
Former WNBA Hall of Famer Sue Bird and former pro soccer player Megan Rapinoe have joined forces to produce a 4-part short film series that highlights “the grit, determination, tenacity, and strength of female athletes around the world.” Freshly dropped on the Togethxr YouTube channel, the sports series explores the challenges of returning to the game after childbirth, injury’s emotional toll, systemic inequities in nutrition, and the realities of aging for the athlete committed to a lifetime of sport.
Bird and Rapinoe bring us Unstoppable by way of their production company, A Touch More, which aims to center stories of “revolutionaries who move culture forward.” This new series is spot on with the company’s mission to uplift through powerful narrative. Each film is about 11 minutes long.
In Episode 1, “Filling the Void,” Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus is at the peak of her career when she gets sidelined by a ruptured ACL, one month before the Olympics. The battle she wages isn’t only physical. It’s psychological, and made more challenging by the expectations placed on female athletes, and societal assumptions about women’s mental make-up. “To be injured, you have to live day by day,” Thibus says at the onset of the film.
In “Fueling Giants,” Episode 2, from the lab to the kitchen to the pitch, we hear from performance nutritionist Carsan Dittman, former pro-basketball player turned chef Morghan Medlock, and soccer player Claire Emslie. The trio looks at the systemic nutrition gap holding women back in pro sports. Elite athletes know that sports nutrition provides the extra edge needed to perform at the highest tier level. This film takes a hard look at whether women are being under-served and under-fueled in the universe of athletics where often, male athletes get private chefs, a private masseuse, and plenty more.
Image: Claire Emslie, Scottish professional soccer forward who plays in the American National Women’s Soccer League
In Episode 3, “Born to Carry,” Olympic Gold Medalist Alex Morgan and World Champion Victoria Azarenka speak to what it takes to return to the field and court after giving birth. There’s the balancing of sports and motherhood, maintenance of sponsorships, and the question of how to be there for one’s kids’ most pivotal moments. Episode 4, “The Second Spring,” features dancer Sarah Crowell who redefines her relationship with her body and craft as she experiences the inevitable realities of aging. This film, while highlighting a dancer’s journey hrough menopause, succeeds broadly at shining light on the unstoppable stamina, intentionality, and vulnerability it takes to be a woman with a lifelong career as an athlete.
The same can be said of the other three treasures in this film series – stories presented by Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird and a team of directors with an eye toward elevating, and pulling back layers, on some of the common (but not so much talked about) experiences unique to women athletes.
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In addition to producing this series, Rapinoe and Bird break down the sports landscape as co-hosts of the Webby Award-winning podcast A Touch More with Sue Bird & Megan Rapinoe. Bird also runs the podcast, Bird’s Eye View, which follows the WNBA. Separately, Rapinoe is the engine behind the soon-to-be-released documentary Kick, about Nikki Hiltz, the fastest American in the 1500m, and the first out transgender runner to compete at the Olympics.
