There is something inherently compelling about a sporting underdog, but Contenders begins with a team for whom even that description almost feels generous. Brantley Palmer’s 98-minute documentary charts the history and gradual transformation of the Fall Mountain Regional High School football programme in southwestern New Hampshire, where decades of disappointment had turned the Wildcats into a team opponents expected to beat rather than feared playing.
Palmer establishes that history before concentrating on the people who attempted to change it. Fall Mountain Regional High School opened in 1966, drawing students from several surrounding communities, with its varsity football programme following in 1968. The statistics presented by the documentary make uncomfortable reading. Between 1968 and 2018, the Wildcats managed only six winning seasons and three playoff appearances, without securing a state championship. Between 2000 and 2016 alone, their combined record stood at 22 wins, 117 losses and one tie.
The situation became so difficult that Fall Mountain was unable to field a varsity team in 2012 because there simply weren’t enough players. While other sports at the school experienced periods of success, football had developed a reputation as the programme that couldn’t compete. Opponents approached Fall Mountain expecting victory, and years of coaching instability only made establishing any lasting structure more difficult.
Contenders makes good use of archival footage to illustrate that history rather than simply asking its interviewees to describe it. Old camcorder recordings capture games from the crowd and provide the documentary with an appropriately unpolished record of the programme’s past. Palmer combines these images with contemporary interviews, training footage and later match coverage, gradually allowing the production itself to become more immediate as the Wildcats begin moving towards something resembling genuine competitiveness.
The pivotal figure is Orion Binney, a former Wildcats player who returned to Fall Mountain and interviewed for the vacant head coaching position. Binney admits that he thought he had performed poorly in the interview, only to discover that he had been given the job. What followed wasn’t an instant transformation accompanied by a swelling soundtrack and a conveniently timed championship. He inherited a programme that hadn’t won a game in three years and initially had only a tiny number of experienced upperclassmen available to him.
His first challenge was therefore more fundamental than designing plays or studying opponents. Fall Mountain needed players, commitment and, perhaps most importantly, a reason for young people to believe that joining the football team was worthwhile. The Wildcats finally won a game during Binney’s first season, ending their lengthy drought, but lost every other fixture. In purely statistical terms, very little had changed, yet the victory represented something more important for a programme accustomed to expecting defeat.
The introduction of Division IV offered another opportunity. Binney viewed the new division as somewhere Fall Mountain could compete against programmes facing similar limitations and begin constructing something sustainable. Not everyone shared his optimism, with scepticism remaining that moving divisions would make any meaningful difference to a team with such a long history of losing.
Initially, the doubters appeared to have a point. Fall Mountain lost its opening three games before suddenly winning three in succession. At 3-3, the Wildcats found themselves entering a game knowing that victory would secure a playoff place. They lost, but the more significant development was that the conversation surrounding the team had changed. People were attending games, community interest was increasing and the players were beginning to believe they belonged on the same field as their opponents.
That shift in mentality is where Contenders becomes more interesting than a straightforward collection of results. Winning matters in competitive sport, and Palmer doesn’t pretend otherwise, but the rebuilding of Fall Mountain is shown as something dependent upon infrastructure and community as much as individual talent. A programme cannot easily create sustained success when it lacks resources, continuity and participation, and the documentary demonstrates how improvements away from the field can eventually influence what happens on it.
One particularly important development is the creation of a booster club. With the involvement of a player’s parent, sponsorship and investment begin arriving, alongside team dinners, meals for away games, photography and other forms of practical support that established programmes might take for granted. None of these things guarantees touchdowns on Friday night, but together they help transform a struggling collection of players into something that increasingly resembles a properly supported football programme.
Binney also expands his coaching staff, including bringing in defensive coach James Tremblay, while participation grows dramatically. Eventually, 44 players sign up. Considering Fall Mountain had previously reached a point where it couldn’t even field a varsity team, that figure arguably says as much about the programme’s progress as any scoreboard.
Results begin reflecting the change. After early setbacks, the Wildcats reach the playoffs and face the Winnisquam Bears. Fall Mountain loses 20-0, but merely reaching that stage demonstrates how far the programme has travelled from the years when opponents effectively regarded them as an automatic victory.
The 2021 season pushes that progress further. With Fall Mountain sitting at 3-3, a late victory over Mascoma sends the Wildcats back to the playoffs, where they face Newport. Palmer presents an opponent already confident of progressing, something that provides Fall Mountain with additional motivation. This time the Wildcats produce the upset, advancing to the championship game against Somersworth. The final proves a step too far, but a programme once defined almost entirely by losing has now played for a championship.
Crucially, Contenders doesn’t stop at the point where a more conventional sports documentary might roll its credits. There is no neat suggestion that Fall Mountain has permanently solved everything. Injuries intervene, including the loss of a quarterback to an ACL tear, inexperienced players are forced into greater responsibility, and the Wildcats eventually find themselves moved into Division III. A 5-4 season narrowly misses the playoffs, demonstrating both how much expectations have changed and how fragile sporting progress can be.
Binney’s eventual departure reinforces another reality behind high school athletics. He steps aside as head coach to become an athletic director at Woodstock, with financial necessity playing a part because Fall Mountain cannot provide him with a liveable wage. It is an important detail because Contenders repeatedly shows that sporting programmes don’t exist separately from practical concerns. Coaches have families and careers, facilities require money, players graduate and every season requires another rebuilding process.
James Tremblay subsequently takes over as head coach, allowing Palmer to move closer to the contemporary Wildcats. The later sections contain considerably more game footage, sideline activity, team talks and crowd reactions. Sacks, touchdowns, punts and passes give the documentary greater immediacy, while access to the players and coaches helps convey the atmosphere surrounding a programme that people have finally started taking seriously.
Palmer’s greatest strength is his willingness to let the history accumulate. By spending time explaining just how unsuccessful Fall Mountain had been, later achievements carry more significance. A playoff appearance doesn’t sound extraordinary when compared with the dominant high school programmes that collect championships, but context changes everything. For these Wildcats, simply reaching a position where opponents could no longer assume victory represented substantial progress.
The interviews are informative and sincere, particularly when former players, coaches and those connected with the programme describe what Fall Mountain football meant to them. The match footage also provides welcome energy between the talking-head sections, while the older camcorder material gives the film a useful sense of history. Palmer clearly has affection for the people involved, but Contenders generally avoids turning that affection into an overly polished inspirational advertisement.
At 98 minutes, however, the documentary is longer than its story requires. There is a considerable amount of interview, historical and game material, and although much of it is worthwhile individually, the accumulation sometimes reduces the momentum. A tighter edit could have preserved the essential history while creating a more forceful progression from perennial failure to genuine competitiveness.
In fact, there is such a strong central underdog story here that a considerably shorter version could potentially be very effective. A tightly constructed documentary concentrating on Fall Mountain’s extraordinary losing history, Binney’s arrival, the rebuilding of participation and community support, and the eventual championship appearance could deliver the same emotional journey with greater urgency. Contenders has the material for that kind of concentrated film, but Palmer instead chooses a broader and more detailed record of the programme.
That approach has advantages too. The extended running time means we come to understand that Fall Mountain’s turnaround wasn’t the result of one inspirational speech, one gifted quarterback or one miraculous season. It required years of work from coaches, players, parents and supporters. Progress arrived incrementally, sometimes disappeared again and frequently had little to do with the final score.
This is ultimately what makes Contenders worthwhile even for viewers who aren’t devoted followers of American football. The documentary is about changing a culture of expected failure. When a team has spent decades being dismissed, convincing players that they can compete becomes an achievement before they have won anything at all. Filling a roster, attracting spectators and establishing proper support structures become meaningful victories in their own right.
Sports cinema has always loved the underdog, from fictional teams such as those in Major League and The Mighty Ducks to countless documentaries about unlikely competitors. Fall Mountain fits comfortably within that tradition, except there is no Hollywood guarantee that the Wildcats will eventually lift the trophy. Palmer understands that their story remains valuable regardless.
Contenders would benefit considerably from a leaner edit, and its 98-minute running time occasionally asks more patience than the material needs. Nevertheless, Brantley Palmer has created an engaging and affectionate account of a football programme that spent decades being treated as a punchline before gradually giving its community reasons to believe again.
By the end, whether Fall Mountain eventually wins the championship almost feels secondary to the fact that the Wildcats have learned they are capable of competing for one. We started Contenders knowing nothing about this small New Hampshire football programme and finished it genuinely invested in what happens to them next. Somewhere along those 98 minutes, Screen Critix apparently became Wildcats fans, and there are certainly worse ways for a sports documentary to leave its audience.
Go Wildcats.
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