The 10 Best Sports Movies Starring Kids
Believe it or not (and I do not, even as I type the words myself), The Mighty Ducks turns 25 years old today. A quarter of a century ago, on October 2, 1992, Emilio Estevez’s cynical, selfish lawyer Gordon Bombay was transformed into an inspirational leader of children by a court-ordered stint as the coach of a kids’ hockey team. I’m not a legal expert, but it seems to me like if a guy gets charged with drunk driving, then maybe he’s not someone who should be spending a lot of unsupervised time with young people. But, hey, that’s just me.
Gordon’s unconventional coaching style transformed the Mighty Ducks into contenders, and then into a multimedia franchise for Disney. In D2, Gordon becomes the coach for a national junior hockey team. In D3, an evil robot is sent through time from the future to destroy Joshua Jackson before he can become the leader of humanity in a war with machines. (Oops, sorry I’m getting D3 and T3 confused; D3 was another kids sports movie.)
Dubious plot machinations aside, The Mighty Ducks and its sequels helped to create a whole subgenre of inspirational kids sports movies throughout the decade. In honor of this momentous anniversary in the history of cinema (and questionable punishments for men arrested for drunken driving), we’re ranking the best sports movies starring kids ever made. Here they are, with apologies to Youngblood and Remember the Titans: