February 25, 2025
Provided Image/Strategic Heights Media
The docuseries 'Spirit' follows the 2022-23 cheer team at George Washington High School in Northeast Philly, which became the first squad from the School District of Philadelphia to make it to Nationals.
A cheerleading squad from Northeast Philly overcomes obstacles while making history on its journey to a national competition in the upcoming documentary, "Spirit."
The four-part series is focused on the co-ed team at George Washington High School, which became the first cheer squad from the School District of Philadelphia to make it to the National Cheerleaders Association High School Nationals during the 2022-23 season. "Spirit," directed by Philly native Matt Howley and produced by NBA star Steph Curry's Unanimous Media company, premieres Thursday, Feb. 27, on Comcast's "Black Experience" platform.
"It was a blast to make it, and it's an area that I'm fond of, growing up in that area, so it's a very special project for me," Howley said Monday. "... What I really admired was these kids got everything thrown at them, and they just never stopped and never made any excuses. So I found that to be very, very inspiring."
"Spirit" tells the underdog story of the George Washington team, nicknamed "G-Dub," as coaches Michele Sorkin-Socki and Veronica Hayes and 15 athletes prepare for and compete at the district, state and eventually national levels. Along the way, they must overcome their team's lack of resources, break down cheerleading stereotypes and face formidable challenges in their home lives.
Howley, a La Salle University alum, has a wide range of sports documentary experience over the past two decades through his production company, the WorkShop Content Studios — including the Emmy-nominated documentary series "Basketball or Nothing" on Netflix in 2019. This was his first cheerleading-related endeavor, though. He admits he "knew very little" about the sport previously but learned much from the athletes, coaches and fellow producers while making "Spirit." Howley notes that it's totally fine if viewers come in with little cheer knowledge themselves.
"We're not trying to do a really niche cheer story for a cheer audience," he said. "We hope this story is universal, so we probably won't be getting into the nuance of cheer and where a hand should go on a stunt, or how this or that should be done. We're going to try to get people to really buy into our characters and this journey."
Howley was drawn to do a project on George Washington cheer after reading an article in September 2022 in the Philadelphia Inquirer that detailed the relatively new team's qualification for Nationals and the hard work and fundraising — they needed about $30,000 to get the whole team to Dallas for the competition — that it would take to actually get there. Howley called the school the next day to inquire about a documentary, and said he was essentially told to "get in line" behind other interested production companies. He set up a time soon after to go observe the team at practice and felt an immediate connection with the group.
"Meeting the kids and hearing what they wanted to do in a documentary series and what they thought was important was very eye opening for me," Howley said. "So when I heard that, I drove home, and I just couldn't stop thinking about what this could be."
Once he got the green light for "Spirit," Howley said they were able to "hit the ground running," especially since he already had familiarity with the school — since he attended nearby Archbishop Ryan High School and had been to George Washington for football games — and knew Sorkin-Socki through a mutual friend.
He said he hit it off pretty quickly with both coaches, who he described as "forces of nature" and "great Philadelphia characters." Howley was impressed with their and the team's dedication to raising funds through bake sales and GoFundMe pages while also staying focused on their craft — which involved hours spent perfecting routines for competitions and exhibitions, and even a halftime performance at an Eagles game.
"The team and the coaches every step of the way refused to take no for an answer," Howley said. "There was a million reasons to quit. ... It was just like, we'll figure out a way. That's what stays with me now, is just finding a way and not taking no for an answer."
Provided Image/Strategic Heights Media'Spirit,' which premieres Thursday, follows the George Washington High School cheer team's journey to Nationals during the 2022-23 season.
Howley said Curry's production company was eager to sign on to the project after seeing the trailer and a rough cut of the first episode, and that Curry could resonate with the cheerleaders' underdog spirit.
"Steph overcame a lot, as far as proving you belong," Howley said. "He went to a small college, and there wasn't the biggest expectations for him, and he overcame the odds. So he saw a lot of himself in the story of these kids. ... Once they found out that Steph was on board, they were very excited."
Some of the most special, poignant moments of the series come outside of the gym, when students open up about tragedies affecting their families around gun violence and immigration.
"My favorite moments really don't have a lot to do with what we saw on the mat," Howley said. "I think getting to know these kids, and then them inviting us back to their homes, and then sharing their stories with us, I found to be the most rewarding part of this. That's something that we try to do in a series like this, to make people really become attached to these kids, so that when they take the mat, it just means that much more."
After months of fundraising and preparation, George Washington made it to Nationals, competing in Dallas in January 2023. They finished 10th place in the country.
Howley recalls the coaches asking him at the beginning of the documentary process, "What if we don't do well at nationals?"
"I said, it's my belief that you guys just going there is the ultimate win," Howley said he replied. "You're the first to ever do it, you know?"
More than hoisting a trophy under the spotlights at Nationals, members of the team had even bigger goals in mind, including breaking down barriers in their sport. In the "Spirit" trailer, one cheerleader says, "People think we are the bottom end of the cheer world," while another remarks "Black kids, they're like, 'They don't cheer.'"
"When I met these kids, I said, 'What would you want this series to be about?' A lot of them were saying the same message, which is, 'We want to shatter stereotypes of what people think cheerleading is,'" Howley said. "I expected to hear, 'Hey, we want to win another public league championship. We want to win a national championship.' Nobody said that. They were like, 'We want to shatter these stereotypes, and we want to prove that we belong.'
"And I just thought, that's a universal message and who can't get behind that? So that became our biggest theme in the show is proving you belong, no matter where you came from. You might not have the best practice mats, you might have a gym with no air conditioning and it's 100 degrees. You might have uniforms that are 7 years old, and it doesn't matter because they belong as well. So walking in that first day in Dallas, I was like, wow they made it. Everything else, in my mind, it was just a bonus."
Starting Thursday, "Spirit" can be watched on Comcast's "Black Experience" content hub, which launched in 2021 and is available at no additional cost to customers across Xfinity entertainment devices, including X1, Flex, Xumo Stream Box and the Xumo Play app.
Check out the trailer for "Spirit" below:
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