The Manassas High School Football Team Portrayed In The Film Undefeated

The story told in the 2011 Sport Documentary film Undefeated, is one of many troubles and triumphs. There are many factors that play into the performance of the Manassas High School football team in their 2009 season, the season that the film covers. One way to analyze the team’s performance is from a Sociological perspective. To do this, one must watch the documentary through three different metaphorical lenses to give them each of the Sociological perspectives; These include the Functionalist perspective, the Conflict perspective, and the Symbolic Interactionist perspective, all of which include many different factors that can explain why the team performed the way it did.

In order to see the film from a Functionalist perspective, one must

Two social institutions that seemed to play a role into the performance of the team were the school they attended, Manassas High School, and the church that the members of the team attended. The school seemed to be an institution that hindered the performance of the boys. The major reasons for this include the lack of athletic equipment and funding, as well as the overall budgeting of the school. A speaker in the film stated that when Manassas high school was being remodeled, they seemed to run out of resources at a certain point and never ended up finishing the athletic portion of the school. In addition, not much equipment was purchased after the remodeling job. This puts the team at a disadvantage because they did not have the resources to do as many drills or other performance enhancing activities that the other schools in their conference have access to. The church and the players religion seemed to be another institution

In order to see the film from this perspective, one must consider the symbols that exist amongst all of the team members. A very important symbol throughout the team’s season was the sport of football. The sport of football bettered the players throughout their 2009 season. To quote coach Courtney, football can “reach your hearts through something you love”. It definitely seemed to do just that for many of the players that season. The sport helped the less fortunate boys work together and be a part of “something bigger than themselves”. Many players faced challenges in their life and football helped them overcome them. One player named Chavis had really bad anger management problems and really struggled with it throughout the beginning of the season especially. At one point, his anger overcame him to the point that he actually quit and left his team. His love for football sparked something in his heart after a few weeks, and Chavis ended up returning to the team with a brand new outlook on life. Football also helped a player called “Money” achieve his dream of attending college. Money was the smartest boy on the team, however he had a very small stature compared to the other players. The film made it very clear that Money was working really hard in school in hopes to get a scholarship onto a college team because his family did not have enough money to