MARK SMITH HIGH SCHOOL STATE CHAMPIONS & COACH
Coach Clifton and remaining team members of Mark Smith gather to remember the miracle of Macon bringing one of the most athletic and exciting teams in high school basketball history to Georgia.   
​

More Than Champions - Trailer

MORE THAN CHAMPIONS connects with  the racial divide in schools through the eyes of sports. In the sixties a war was taking place in our own country.  The franchise includes a book by Jag Gholson and a feature film among stories of race, desegregation and trials through the eyes of basketball where the trophy is not what you would think. Mark Smith High School's state championship run is a defining moment for the culmination of the movie. 

This franchise begins with a trip from Ghana then extends into moving stories set deep in the South. The feature film promising to be filled with action, suspense, drama and ending in reconciliation.  Our nation needs hope and its time we come together to become MORE THAN A CHAMPION!
 
MARK SMITH HIGH SCHOOL BECOMES THE MACON MIRACLE!


You are invited to watch this short promotional video and our coaches video so you can see how to get involved in the latest Veritas Mission Films & GR Productions in our sports entertainment in Oceania Studios franchise:  MORE THAN CHAMPIONS. This film is led by Jag Gholson and Dr. Kevin McAfee. 

The 60's brought great change in our nation regarding civil rights.  In Macon, Georgia, it was racially intense especially for a young man named Sam Oni, who was recruited out of Western Nigeria.  Desegregation and basketball provided a way for people to begin a new way to interact, communicate and share commonalities not previously recognized.  This film and the stories behind it carry the impact of how these champions coped. 

Executive Producer from Georgia Jag Gholson along with African Academy Award celebrity, Dr. Miller Bargeron Producer, are joining Dr. Kevin McAfee and his film team about this moving opportunity to change the way the world sees racial divide through this sports film. Sam Oni has spoken to many groups, colleges and forums regarding Civil Rights using the visual language of film.  He was the first black student accepted to an all white Christian college. He started with rooming together with Dr. Don Baxter, a "Hall of Fame" basketball member for Mercer University, who later became a leading surgeon. .   

Coaches Calling - Join The Team! 
Our coaches are a group of film professionals, entrepreneurs and athletes whose team is coming together illuminating stories with a real purpose, racial unity.  On the outside, the racial divide of desegregation was an even more fierce competitor on the court.  It's time to stand up and we need your help to make a difference, today, Our goal is to find financiers who will champion this cause with us and team up together for racial reconciliation as a cause. 
 With out country still filled with division over race relations, this begins a new and fresh dialogue and what we need is to be solution centered.  Would you join our team, just contact our coaches, the clock is starting and we are in overtime. 

A New Beginning

As Sam Oni entered Mercer and roomed with the all-star center on the basketball team Don Baxter, he found out quickly what it meant to be a real champion in life and what it meant to also live in real rejection and experience losing on so many levels on and off the court of life. Don later was inducted into Mercer's Hall of Fame. 

​This movie is about overcoming odds and bringing hope forward. Great school teams were rising to greatness during this tumultuous time in history and they were focused on the trophy and were NOT focusing on race.
​
Their love of the game made playing together a natural phase of competition.

Deep in the South during the 1960's there was a segregated rumbling that was not just in the noise of the day, but on the hardwood floor on the basketball courts. Players were challenged with crossing social barriers for the love of the game. They became friends first and foremost, even during the trials.

​Healing needed to begin, but not without a great sacrifice and cost during the many seasons of championship basketball teams as cultures came together in a new way, through sports.

In the world when the church should have stepped up and built a bridge between races, athletics did just this and lifelong friends were made, which still stand to this very day.  The lesson learned from these great men as they reflect on the life of an unsung champion, Sam Oni crying out for freedom. 
Listen to their stories...

SPORTS STORIES OF DESEGREGATION IN THE DEEP SOUTH

Sam Oni was finally coming to America as a "recruited solution" by Mercer president Rufus Harris in his desire to integrate an all white college with its first black student. Knowing it was going to be hard in the deep South, but not fully realizing deep costs and pain Sam would truly suffer. Dr. Martin Luther King was speaking at the Lincoln Monument the week Sam came into the United States.  This unknown hero arrived to face all the persecution imaginable.  This is where our stories of desegregation really begins...

Focusing on Character & Reconciliation Through Basketball
(Beginning a new dialogue for even today...)

Inside our group of stories, many came from championship teams from Mark Smith High School in Macon, Beach High School in Savannah and more.  During racial divide, they had growing respect for each other as team mates and competitors.  Even as basketball was one of the ways to begin the desegregation process, a sense of brotherhood brought them into true friendship, while at the same time, churches were tearing them apart.  

These early teams set an example of true sportsmanship, and Southern congregations made Sunday the "worst day" of segregation in society.
The teams all just wanted to enjoy the game, when everything around them seemed to be hitting the hardwood floors with harsh racism.  The civil rights issues were plaguing the nation, racism was getting worse, and they ignored the noise, and just kept on playing.  
​
​This is more than a story of a sport and a championship, but a real honoring of a better way to live was in play, to change the world and see the purity in recognizing our own commanailities to stand for truth for all people, regardless of race.  This documentary births MORE THAN CHAMPIONS focusing on powerfully emotional stories of desegregation, sports and faith. 
HOW WOULD WE EVER COME TOGETHER...
COULD STORIES ADDRESS OUR RACE PROBLEMS, OUR SOCIAL DIVIDES?
BEGINNING WITH CREATING A NEW DIALOGUE, REGARDLESS OF RACE
​BEING A FAMILY, BEING ONE...
​THIS FIRST STEP BEGINS WITH SPONSORS,
CONSIDER BEING A CHAMPION TODAY
AND INVEST IN THIS LEGACY
​A LEGACY OFFERING SOLUTIONS
YOU CAN DONATE TO THE NON PROFITI TODAY at VMFA to help promote the film.
 www.veritasmissionfilms.com

You can also email [email protected] to be involved in helping us make this exciting story a beautifully, cinematic motion picture.