Can a love story be about one small city and two football teams, and can a love letter be “written” in the form of a documentary film?
The unequivocable answer from Gillian Van Stratt is yes, on both counts. And the proof of that will be shown on the big screen in Bay City on April 13.
Van Stratt oversees visual storytelling for MLive as our director of audience. And last summer, she had an idea: Find a town with a high school football rivalry that embodies the culture of the people who live there, and then embed our Emmy-winning team for a week to capture the passion around the game of the year.
It’s about kids, it’s about history and it’s about dreams – not just the ones the players are chasing, but the ones their parents realized or were denied.
“I wanted smaller programs that felt like a more interesting story than if you just tried to pluck two powerhouses playing for a state championship,” she said. “I didn't want this to just be about football. I wanted a high school story about coming of age, that point in people's lives.”
The result is “Rivalry: Battle of the Bay,” an hour-long feature documentary film that highlights the nearly 50-year rivalry between Bay City Central and Bay City Western high schools.
To Van Stratt’s point, neither team was a threat to win a state title in 2023. But there was so much substance, so much history, and so many characters.
While Van Stratt had a concept when she rented a house near Central High School for a week leading up to the game in October, she had no idea of how deeply the rivalry was carved into the soul of this city of 32,000 at the base of Saginaw Bay.
She’s a Michigander, but Van Stratt acknowledges she’d only passed through Bay City in her travels on the way to other places during her life. She did know that The Bay City Times, and its human encyclopedia of Bay County sports in the form of MLive sportswriter Lee Thompson, had solid connections to the two schools and their football programs.
“We reached out to the principals and (athletic directors) and described the vision to see if they’d allow us access,” Van Stratt said. “They loved the idea, welcomed us and said, ‘Come on in.’"
That put our film team in the hallways of the schools, in the meeting rooms, and even in players’ homes to document what this rivalry means to the athletes, coaches, alumni and fans.
What Van Stratt’s team saw and experienced, while filming and living there for a week, was a town where people stay – or return, after going to college. Where the Western principal graduated from Central. Where the guy painting the lines on the field for Friday night played on that very gridiron decades ago.
“We talked to a senior about his future, and he said, ‘I'm looking at this university, and then I'd like to come back to Bay City to raise my family,’” Van Stratt said. “I think a lot of people in bigger towns in Michigan would just be like, ‘Why would you stay in Bay City?’
“There is something about a town where they're not just all looking to leave. Like this fullback – he's walking down the hallway to go see his dad, who's an assistant coach, and there are pictures of his Mom and his Grandpa up in the hallway.”
The history was everywhere – even the ubiquitous presence of the 34-year-old open wound known as T.L. Handy High School. That school was turned into a middle school in 1990, its proud student base cleaved and dispersed to Central and Western high schools.
“If this documentary turns into a musical the showstopper song is going to be ‘I Would Have Been a Handy Grad,’” Van Stratt joked. “You’d be interviewing somebody who’d been at Central or Western 20 years ago and they’d say, ‘You know, I would have been a Handy grad.”
Van Stratt’s anecdotes and impressions about filming in Bay City made me smile. I lived and worked there for 18 years, the longest I’ve ever been in one place in my life. The deep roots and traditions of the people who lived there at first befuddled me, but then won me over.
“I had a conversation with another documentarian, one who does more true-crime stuff. And she said, ‘What did you uncover, what did you dig up?’” in shooting the Bay City documentary, Van Stratt said. “It stopped me. … I was like, ‘Well, what we uncovered was heart.’”
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There are two showings of “Rivalry: Battle of the Bay” on April 13 – at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. For tickets, click here.
