On Monday, February 11, history teacher Dan Greenstone’s Sociology of Sports class hosted its own Morning Exercise displaying documentaries the students created.

The class met four days a week during D period the first semester, and debuted their semesters work at the MX. “The premise of the class is that sports is a prism and a wedge. What we mean by that is because sports takes up such a large share of our cultural energy, we can see important issues being played out through the lens of sports,” Greenstone said. “Whether it be race, class, the opioid epidemic, sexual orientation, gender––all of those interesting important issues show up in the arena of sports.”

According to Greenstone, sports can be a platform for social change. “Sometimes sports is a wedge, which means that it leads the way,” Greenstone said. “For example, Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball eight years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Sometimes things happen first in sports.”

Greenstone has been teaching the Sociology of Sports class for six consecutive years. The class had an MX a couple of years ago, according to Greenstone, where they showed a couple of student projects. Three years ago, the students produced one documentary about transgender athletes, which debuted at MX and was later entered in the Chicago International Youth Film Festival.

“What I work with my students on is identifying interesting and important stories and how to tell those stories and how to make those stories come alive in a way that will resonate with viewers,” Greenstone said.

Sophomore Bodie Florsheim’s documentary is about Jordan McNair, a football player at the University of Maryland. On June 13, 2018, he passed away during practice due to heat stroke. According to Florsheim, heat stroke is preventable and McNair should not have died. As a result, the Head Coach of the team was fired, the president of the University announced his resignation, and multiple members of the medical staff were fired as well.

Florsheim interviewed Ellis McKinney, a football player at the University of Maryland and good friend of McNair. Florsheim also contacted a number of Baltimore-based newspaper reporters for material to narrate his film. “My goal was to not have any narration by me,” Florsheim said, “and I was successful with that goal in that I only used my interviewees’ voices the entire time to explain the story. It turned out really well.”  

Topics they have discussed in class are the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) in sports, bullying in sports, the sexual misconduct case involving the Ohio State athletic department uncovered in August, and athletes who were also political figures, such as Muhammad Ali.

Greenstone is not a film expert himself, but he has taught the students about making films. “For this documentary assignment, Mr. Greenstone has taken kind of a back seat,” Florsheim said, “but in the other assignments like Muhammed Ali and Urban Meyer, what we did was a lot more essay–based or readings.”

Another student in the class, junior Anna Fuder, made her documentary about discrimination and abuse female cheerleaders in the NFL encounter. Fuder and her documentary partner, senior Pilar Grover, interviewed three former NFL cheerleaders about the discrimination and abuse they faced from their coaches and directors.

Fuder enjoyed how the class was discussion–based and gave students a chance to understand how social issues related to sports. “The way that Mr. Greenstone taught it helped us learn more about the topics than we would if we were just reading an article,” Fuder said, “because we had a lot of discussions about ‘how can we see these patterns in other situations?’ or ‘how can we interpret this and what it means in the sports world?’”

“I think if we were just reading articles or pieces about some of the topics we covered we wouldn’t be able to really get a good understanding of the material,” Fuder said.

“Sociology of sports is politics in sports. It’s any sort of controversy that might have happened in sports,” Florsheim said. “After taking the class, it’s one of those things where you just have more general knowledge on these people and/or these events that you can then tell to other people. Now I can go on for days talking about Urban Meyer or Muhammad Ali.”

The first semester is now over, and after the class officially wrapped up by debuting their documentaries at an MX on February 11th, Fuder feels she has a new perspective on sports. “It definitely opened my mind into what is behind the face of sports,” Fuder said, “and the part that most people pay attention to but don’t really see what’s under the surface.”