A home-grown documentary about Morgan Hill’s first high school lacrosse team is ascending to a national audience as Brad Ledwith’s “The Mighty Oaks” is set to be distributed to major streaming platforms.
When Ledwith’s kids came home from lacrosse camp in 2017 declaring it the “most amazing thing” they’d ever done, he faced a dilemma. The closest lacrosse teams he could send them to were all the way in San Jose.
Rather than accept the commute, he resolved to create Morgan Hill’s very own team.
He had never played lacrosse. He knew nothing about coaching. But Ledwith, a local business owner and father of four, decided to YouTube his way through it.
Almost a decade later, the story of this grassroots effort is retold in “The Mighty Oaks,” a feature-length documentary premiering Dec. 9 on video-on-demand platforms including Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
The film follows the Live Oak lacrosse team’s 2024 season, “as the original players who helped establish the program in 2015 take one last shot at a championship,” reads the documentary’s website.
“What I did is not anything special by any means,” Ledwith said in a recent interview. “And that’s where this transcends Morgan Hill. It’s every community in the United States.”
The journey wasn’t easy. Ledwith’s first team suffered brutal losing streaks for their first three years. He crowdsourced coaching advice on social media, where the online lacrosse community rallied behind the fledgling program with practice plans and encouragement.
“I was posting on Twitter, like, ‘Okay, what should I do with the kids tomorrow?’ And the lacrosse community would just chime in, helping me create practice plans,” Ledwith said. “The lacrosse community just loved these kids that were starting a program from scratch at the high school.”
Getting lacrosse into Live Oak High School presented its own obstacles. An active contract stipulated that adding a sport required eliminating an existing one, and nobody wanted to cut a beloved program to make room for lacrosse. So Ledwith collaborated with MHUSD teachers and staff to change the language, finally launching the program in early 2020.
Ledwith managed to recruit Gary Rosicki, former San Jose Stealth player, as a coach for the new Acorns team.
They only managed 26 practices before COVID-19 shut everything down. Ledwith bid farewell to his players with the expectation that the lockdown would be short-lived.
“I said, ‘Okay, you guys, we’ll see you in two weeks.’ We all know what happened after that,” Ledwith said. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to anybody that started the program.”
When practices finally resumed, Ledwith began filming everything, because he sensed he had something special on his hands: not just a team, but a story of determination and perseverance he knew could appeal to a larger audience.
Ledwith partnered with director Brendan Harty of Dances With Media to create a sizzle reel, initially hoping to interest Netflix in following a professional lacrosse player coaching small-town kids. After multiple rejections, Ledwith decided to finish the project himself.
“I became the executive producer, and I was the one paying for everything,” he said. “I paid for the production, I paid for the editor, I paid for the director, I paid for the film crew, I paid for the light crew, I paid for the sound crew.”
Over seven years, Ledwith invested more than $100,000 of his own money into the documentary, which follows the 2024 senior season of his original players, including his twin sons, Nolan and Ben Ledwith.
“The Mighty Oaks” weaves together multiple narratives beyond wins and losses, delving into the personal struggles of several of the student athletes involved as the program developed.
“When I set out to make ‘The Mighty Oaks,’ I thought I was telling the story of a lacrosse season—one filled with wins, losses and the pursuit of a championship,” director Harty wrote in a statement. “But as the journey unfolded, it became something much more profound. This film is about the power of community, the lessons of team sports and the resilience of young athletes who took it upon themselves to build something lasting.”
The film also highlights how the Morgan Hill community rallied behind the team, with local businesses stepping up to pay expenses for equipment and local restaurants hosting team breakfasts and fundraisers.
And the Live Oak varsity lacrosse program has only grown, now including a girls team.
“Anytime I’ve asked anybody to do anything in regards to lacrosse, it’s always a yes in this community,” Ledwith said. “Some people say it’s like I’ve written a love letter to Morgan Hill. This movie is my love letter to this community who supported me, my family and my business for almost 30 years.”
The film won Best Documentary at the Poppy Jasper International Film Festival in Morgan Hill, where hundreds of attendees packed the theater. Two sold-out screenings drew cheering, crying audiences.
“People were cheering, crying, laughing,” Ledwith said. “You’re going to cry in the movie, you’re going to laugh, but at the end of it, you’re going to feel really good that you spent an hour and a half watching this movie.”
Ledwith and his team submitted the documentary to 48 distributors, receiving 46 rejections from companies including Disney, ESPN, Netflix and Paramount. Freestyle Digital Media, part of Byron Allen’s entertainment conglomerate, eventually picked up “The Mighty Oaks” for distribution.
Variety magazine and other industry publications have covered the film. Ledwith will embark on a national media tour Dec. 2, appearing on morning programs across the country.
According to Ledwith, less than 2% of documentaries recoup their investment, but he aims to join that elite statistic by making “The Mighty Oaks” the highest-grossing independent sports documentary ever made.
“If you like documentaries, you’ll really like this movie,” he said. “If you like sports documentaries, you’ll love it. And if you like lacrosse, you’ll think it should win an Oscar.”
Streaming soon
“The Mighty Oaks,” produced by Morgan Hill’s Brad Ledwith and director Brendan Harty, follows the Live Oak Lacrosse program through the 2024 season as the players who helped establish the program years earlier fight for a championship. The documentary will premiere on streaming platforms that include Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
