The 14 best female-driven sports movies, from ‘Million Dollar Baby’ to ‘A League of Their Own’

A League of Their Own (1992)

There’s no crying in baseball — but there most certainly can be women in it. (Because there were! And there will be again!) Decades later, A League of Their Own is still the gold standard not just for women-centric sports movies but sports movies in general. Geena Davis stars as Dottie Hinson, the star catcher “who plays like Gehrig, and looks like Garbo,” and Lori Petty is her competitive little sister, Kit, who can’t match Dottie’s talent or poise but makes up for it in drive.

Backed by a supporting cast that includes Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, and Tom Hanks as their washed-up coach with an alcohol problem, Penny Marshall‘s classic thrillingly dramatizes America’s pastime alongside the uniquely complicated friendships and rivalries that exist between women. —Mary Sollosi

Bend It Like Beckham (2002)

Filmmaker Gurinder Chadha’s beloved British indie comedy follows Jess (Parminder Nagra), a teen from a Punjabi Sikh family who wants nothing more than to play football (um, soccer, that is). Despite her parents’ disapproval, she joins a local women’s team, where she befriends Jules (a pre-Pirates Keira Knightley), falls for her dreamy Irish coach (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), and learns to bend both the ball and the rules. —M.S.

Blue Crush (2002)

Surf’s up! John Stockwell’s girl-powered Blue Crush stars Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sanoe Lake as a trio of best friends who share a passion for catching waves. As Anne Marie (Bosworth), the star among them, tries to prepare for a major competition that she hopes will help her score a major sponsorship, she falls for a hunky NFL quarterback (Matthew Davis) visiting the island. —M.S.

Bring It On (2000)

Brrrr! It’s cold in here! Since Peyton Reed‘s Bring It On hit theaters in 2000, the cheerleading saga of the Rancho Carne Toros, led by perky captain Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) and her decidedly edgier friend Missy (Eliza Dushku), has ascended to cult classic status.

When Torrance discovers that the Toros’ previous captain had ripped off all their routines from the nearby East Compton Clovers, she is determined for the squad to make a fresh start — without breaking their winning streak. Even now, decades later, Bring It On sure is No. 1. —M.S.

Girlfight (2000)

Girlfight marked the film debuts of two badass women behind it, kickstarting the careers of both its writer-director Karyn Kusama and its star, Michelle Rodriguez. The indie drama follows Diana (Rodriguez), an unhappy teenager who begins training at a boxing gym as a release for her frustrations, only to discover she’s got a talent for the sport.

Both Kusama and Rodriguez picked up Independent Spirit Award nominations for the film, which took home the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000. —M.S.

Gracie (2007)

Loosely inspired by the childhood of actress Elisabeth Shue, Gracie‘s title character is a teenager whose older brother Johnny (Jesse Lee Soffer), a soccer star, encourages her to pursue her passion for the game.

When Johnny dies in a car accident, Gracie (Carly Schroeder) copes with her grief by playing soccer in her brother’s place on the school team, after petitioning the administration that tried to prevent her from playing with the boys. —M.S.

Love & Basketball (2000)

Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps star in Gina Prince-Bythewood‘s romantic sports drama as Monica and Quincy, childhood sweethearts who grow up together (then apart, and then together, and then apart…) and both dream of becoming pro basketball players.

Over the years, their twin narratives overlap as they both pursue the same goal but struggle with different obstacles. But, in the end, the only thing either of them could ever love as much as basketball is the other. So…double or nothing? —M.S.

Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Million Dollar Baby took home four Oscars in 2005, including Best Picture, Best Director for Clint Eastwood, and Best Actress for Hilary Swank. Eastwood stars as Frankie, a jaded boxing trainer, and Swank plays Maggie, a woman determined to become great at the sport and wants Frankie to train her.

Though he resists at first, she wears him down, and their partnership becomes one of the most meaningful friendships in either of their lives. Just don’t forget the tissues — this movie packs one hell of an emotional punch. —M.S.

National Velvet (1944)

Elizabeth Taylor got her first lead role at 12 years old when she was cast as Velvet Brown, a tween obsessed with horses, in director Clarence Brown’s National Velvet.

With the help of a washed-up former jockey (Mickey Rooney), Velvet prepares her horse, which she calls “the Pie,” for the Grand National horse race in England — and decides, at the last minute, that she is the only jockey who believes in the Pie enough to ride him to victory. The film was nominated for five Oscars, and won two. —M.S.

Nyad (2023)

While many of the films on this list focus on younger women, Nyad proves that athletic greatness is possible at any stage of life. Based on the extraordinary true story, world-renowned swimmer Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) sets out in her 60s to accomplish what she couldn’t in her 20s: the legendary 110-mile swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys, without a shark cage.

Directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin incorporate archival footage and voice recordings of the real-life Nyad, as Bening takes us through the emotional depths of chasing a long-held dream in the face of countless setbacks and the ongoing passage of time. —James Mercadante

Personal Best (1982)

Actress Mariel Hemingway and globally-ranked hurdler Patrice Donnelly star as track and field athletes who develop a romantic relationship with each other as they compete to qualify for the Olympics.

The fact that the Games they’re working toward happen to be the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow — which the U.S. eventually decided to boycott — injects the film with a bitter awareness of the futility of their discipline and the frustration that comes with having nothing but a “personal best,” and makes Robert Towne’s drama a very different kind of sports movie. —M.S.

Stick It (2006)

A few years after writing the endlessly quotable screenplay for Bring It On, Jessica Bendinger made her directorial debut with another girl-powered sports movie, 2006’s Stick It. Missy Peregrym stars as Haley, a juvenile delinquent who is forced, after one too many clashes with the law, to return to the world she had left years before: competitive gymnastics.

Getting back on the beam reminds Haley both why she left and why she loved the sport in the first place, and, somehow, she learns to reconcile both the rebel and the gymnast, finding herself somewhere in between. —M.S.

The Swimmers (2022)

Premiering at TIFF, The Swimmers tells the unbelievable yet true —and more relevant than ever — story of two teenage sisters, Yusra and Sarah Mardini (played by real-life sisters Nathalie Issa and Manal Issa), who flee war-ravaged Syria in search of asylum. Their journey sees the two swim across the treacherous Aegean Sea while also rescuing fellow refugees, and against all odds, Yusra achieves the unimaginable: She represents Syria as part of the first-ever IOC Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

At the center of this Netflix biopic is a crowd-pleasing tale of resilience and heroism, but still, director (and co-writer) Sally El Hosaini does not wane from confronting the harsh, unflinching reality of the Syrian crisis. —J.M.

Whip It (2009)

Drew Barrymore made her directorial debut helming this adaptation of Shauna Cross’ coming-of-age sports novel Derby Girl, about a young woman named Bliss (Elliot Page), who doesn’t fit in in the small town where she lives and decides to join a roller derby team.

The squad, the “Hurl Scouts,” is terrible, but that’s beside the point: Armed with a quippy derby name (“Babe Ruthless”) and a whole new clique, Bliss finds herself and learns to seize control both on and off the track. —M.S.