Hames lands spot in 6-on-6 movie

Alyssa Hames may never watch a movie the same way again.

She answered a casting call on Facebook looking for young basketball players to audition for an upcoming film, thinking that it’d maybe just be a day of filming.

Five days of filming later, the AGWSR junior left with a new perspective on the filmmaking process.

“I thought it’d just be one thing, do a quick run, maybe do it again,” Hames said. “But they have to get it from every angle, every scene from every angle.”

She will appear in the filmNew Providence, a movie directed by Thor Moreno of Fearless Cinema, an Iowa-based production company, and inspired by real-life events surrounding Iowa high school 6-on-6 girls’ basketball.

Hames suited up as a member of the New Providence 6-on-6 team. “New Providence” tells the story of a New York City sports magazine writer who is assigned a story about covering 6-on-6 in Iowa. While reluctant to go to a small town, the writer eventually finds out the level of passion the state has for the sport.

The lead role of Laney went to Ava Hawthorne, a sophomore at Gilbert High School. The movie also starts Iowa native Kurt Oberhaus as the sports reporter, Jimmy, and Keyna Reynolds as Teresa, the New Providence coach.

“You just had to go in and say that you were a basketball player, they’d take down your name, what grade you were in,” Hames said. “If you wanted to audition for the lead, you could send in a video of you saying some lines.”

Filming began in January 2020 at the old New Providence Roundhouse gym.

Days were long, Hames noted, six or seven hours. Practice days were four hours long, and included making sure that the girls knew 6-on-6 like second nature.

Even for Hames, who had played 6-on-6 during gym class in middle school, it was a different experience.

“Having only two dribbles is weird,” said Hames, a common refrain from the 5-on-5 generation. “But I got the hang of it.”

Ultimately, it was an experience Hames is unlikely to forget.

“A lot of the girls were around the Des Moines area, so I didn’t know many of them,” Hames said. “But it was a lot of new friends.”

New Providence does not currently have a release date but released a trailer for the film in which Hames can be seen. The film’s official website is newprovidencemovie.com.