Local documentarian creates film featuring Oxford youth hockey program

When 6-year-old Jack Jamieson was selected as “Player of the Week” during the Learn to Play Hockey 2023 beginner season at the Goggin Ice Center, he was asked to go to the arena an hour and a half before a game to be honored.

“We just had no idea what we were expecting,” Lexi Jamieson Marsh, Jack’s mom said. 

“(We) had, pretty much, the red carpet rolled out for us, for our little 6-year-old. We were ushered behind the scenes. We went to see the team warm up. We got to go into the locker room. He got all of his equipment on, and then the coach came out and spoke to him for about 10 minutes before the game.”

The coach asked Jack some questions, and eventually the captain of the Miami University RedHawks came out to talk to him before he walked through the tunnel and fist-bumped everyone.

Then, in ceremonial-fashion, Jack skated out onto the ice and scored the first goal of the game.

“And he was just on cloud nine, just, he was so happy and had the best night of his life,” Marsh said. “And it was just such a lovely experience. … I remember thinking to myself that if you want to convince people to play a sport, I think that this is the way to do it.”

In an effort to revisit childhood days and the experience of falling in love with a sport, Marsh decided to create an independent documentary inspired by her son’s experience at the Goggin Ice Center called “Player of the Week.”

Marsh completed her M.A. in theatre theory and directing at Miami University in 2011 and has lived in Oxford for 16 years. In that time, she’s worked in film through freelance and on commercial feature films in Cincinnati, but she produced her first documentary film in 2014. “Player of the Week” is her second independent documentary film.

“I never grew up playing hockey, so I was really fascinated by this early introduction to the sport because I think a lot of people are aware of how aggressive it is and how physically demanding, and it can seem very dangerous,” she said. 

“And then to see these little bobblehead children flopping around on the ice was just the complete opposite of everything I had assumed about hockey.”

Through her film, Marsh said she wanted to show how important it is to allow children to play, but after many years of knowing sports, she also wanted to “kind of fall back in love with playing a sport again.”

The beginner hockey program, she said, set up several games to “sneakily” teach kids how to skate and shoot a puck, while parents have just as much fun watching them.

Marsh’s film is in cinéma vérité style, meaning it's purely observational. No one is narrating or talking to the cameras, but instead, the audience is watching as if they were in the film. 

It begins on the first day of Learn to Play Hockey during the 2024 season, when everyone is checking in and grabbing their gear provided by the ice center. Parents begin getting their children ready for what, for many of them, is their first time on the ice.

Some kids know how to skate, while others struggle. The viewer follows them through the program from the first skate, three weeks in, and the last skate six weeks later. At that point, the focus switches to one child, 6-year-old Bear Korn, who is selected as the Player of the Week.

“With documentary filmmaking, you always want to go in with a plan and a story you’re trying to tell, and that usually never goes exactly how you had planned because you never know what you’re going to get,” Marsh said.

At first, Marsh planned to wear her hockey skates and follow the kids around with a camera as they skated to portray the film at the eye level of a 6-year-old. After rewatching the footage, she realized her favorite shots were when the camera didn’t move, but instead the children skated in and out of the frame.

“You get more floppiness,” she said. 

One of her favorite shots in the film is when all the kids come out onto the ice for the first time, and one of the smaller boys had just learned a little “push.” After everyone else had beaten him onto the ice, he skates out slowly behind them.

“And I left my camera right where it was. I didn’t move anything, and that shot is just him slowly making his way off camera,” Marsh said.

A premiere showing of “Player of the Week” was hosted at Oxford Lane Library earlier this month, although the film is now available to watch online at onyourfeetentertainment.com under “films.”

Marsh is currently in post-production for her third documentary, “I Was a Hurricane.” The film will be delivered in a three-part miniseries that picks up on a documentary filmed entirely in 2003 that was never finished. 

“I Was a Hurricane” follows the first boys high school varsity ultimate frisbee team in Massachusetts — pre-smartphones, pre-social media — with updated interviews from the players, coaches and rivals over 20 years later.

Marsh anticipates the documentary will be released in 2026.

More information and ways to donate are available online at onyourfeetentertainment.com.