We Belong Here: The Story of Team Dream is streaming on OWN.
The film follows twelve Black women who came together in 2018 and formed the first all Black women’s professional volleyball team. They entered the USA Women’s Volleyball Championship with very little practice time together, which is to say they built the thing and competed in it almost at once.
“Team Dream’s origin story is a powerful reminder of what happens when Black women step into their strength together,” said Tina Perry, president of OWN.
The documentary premiered earlier at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival.
Here is the choice inside it that is worth more than the scoreline. The film is narrated entirely by the athletes themselves. There is no outside voice explaining them, no host standing between the viewer and the women who were actually there. They tell it.
Volleyball is a sport where Black women are usually in somebody else’s frame. Twelve of them made a team that did not exist, and then the telling of it was handed back to them too. Both halves of that are the achievement.
