‘You can’t stop Marge’s shots’: The rise of The Splash, an over-80s basketball team

Make A Splash is a new sports film about a team of women in their 80s and 90s – not from the 1980s or 1990s – who play real basketball, with off-ball picks and turnaround jumpers.

It would be tempting to watch the players and say: Wow, look at those old ladies make cuts and sink those shots! Aren’t they just so … cute? It would also, like an air ball, miss the point.

The 22-minute documentary, one of five women-focused sports films to premiere on 1 June on ESPN in the US, packs in a story that is about far more than their athletic prowess. As much as these women love the game and enjoy staying active, basketball represents something deeper for The Splash, the oldest team in the 50-and-over league in the San Diego Senior Women’s Basketball Association.

Of course, the team like socializing and the road trips. They have become somewhat famous nationally. They are delightfully good at poking fun at themselves: “If you’ve ever seen pregnant manatees play, you’ve seen us play,” says the 87-year-old Nina Duncan, laughing.

The difference between this film and the other four to debut in the W Studios Fifty/50 Shorts initiative is that these athletes have had the benefit of long, full lives. Like most older people, their backstories include challenges that alter their perspectives – even now.

The focal point of the film is the gregarious and hilarious 89-year-old Marge Carl. Carl grew up in New York during the Depression and married a stockbroker in 1954 then had two children. But she describes her husband as a “functioning alcoholic” who killed himself after they divorced.

Her daughter, she says, had the “same DNA as her dad.” By way of explanation, Carl adds, “Heroin is a mean sucker,” Her daughter briefly got clean and sober,