There’s a relatively new documentary that’s been released which you may want to check out. Force of Blue follows the North High boys Polar football team and their coaches, who are Minneapolis cops, through the 2020 football season. The film was made by Jeffery S. Williams and John Cermin, and won the Best Feature Film at the 2024 Hamilton New York International Film Festival.
Of course, 2020 was the year schools were shut down because of Covid. For the football team it also meant few fans in the stands, a shorter season and no state championship games. More importantly for the Polar football team, 2020 was also the year George Floyd was murdered, with the subsequent unrest and burning of the city. This documentary looks at those events and delves into the effect that they had on the student athletes and their law enforcement coaches. You get to better understand the relationship between the players and the coaches, especially their head coach Charles Adams III, known by everyone as OA, which stands for Officer Adams.
Interspersed throughout the film is some history of North Minneapolis, North High and Polar football, both good and bad. It looks at the crime on the Northside as well as the move by some city council members to defund and dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department.
I need to note that the film contains graphic video of the 2020 unrest in Minneapolis. It also talks about the shooting deaths of Jamar Clark and Deshaun Hill.
As a Northsider and supporter of North High Polar Football, I was compelled to watch this documentary. You can watch Force of Blue for free on Tubi or pay-per-view on Amazon Prime Video.