In this 2023 film, teenage golf champion Emily (Evangeline Griffin) transfers from one private Christian academy to another.  At her new school, the golf coach, Coach Kelly (Jenn Cooke), tells her two best players, Madison (Amelia Still) and Hannah (Ashley Brant), to befriend Emily and gauge whether or not she plans on continuing to play golf in high school.

When they approach Emily in the school’s cafeteria, they are shocked when Emily says that she’s a pretty good golf player and she plans to be state champion again.  They are scandalized when Emily mentions that she broke all of Coach Kelly’s old records at her previous school.  They are stunned when Emily suggests that she’s a better golfer than Coach Kelly ever was.

“Are you a Christian?” Madison asks.

Yes, this is another one of those films.  This is another Dave Christiano-directed film in which high school athletics (in this case, golf) are used as a metaphor for faith.  Emily may say she’s a Christian but first she’s going to have to learn that being a Christian means always doing what your coach tells you to do (even if that means hitting with a seven when you’d rather use your nine) and, of course, being a humble winner and a gracious loser.  As Coach Kelly explains it, Emily could be the best player in the world but God might have plans for her that don’t include winning the state championship.  To me, that’s an odd way to look at things.  I mean, if God is the one who is deciding who is going to win the tournament, why waste all that time with practicing your swing and learning how to putt?  It takes Emily a while to listen to Coach Kelly so we end up with a lot of scenes of Madison and Hannah sucking up to the coach while Emily rolls her eyes in the background.  One wonders if Christiano realized that Madison and Hannah are both the type of people who everyone hated in school, the snitches who followed the rules and called out anyone who didn’t.  Emily may be arrogant but at least she seems like she gets some sort of enjoyment out of winning.  At least she acts like a human being as opposed to a Sim, waiting to be told what to do.

Meanwhile, Madison is freaking out over whether or not she’ll be able to afford to attend Zion College.  She has applied for all of the scholarships and she’s been working part-time and saving her money and her father is willing to contribute a little as well but Madison is still short $5,000.  Madison suggests that she could take out a student loan but her mother says, “No, your father doesn’t want you borrowing any money.”

On the one hand, that’s good advice.

On the other hand, Madison’s the one who is paying for most of her tuition so shouldn’t she be the one to decide whether or not to apply for a student loan?  I mean, Madison is going to be a legal adult by the time she starts college.  And it’s not like Dad is helping out all that much so who cares what he thinks?  Still, Madison’s mother tells her that it might just be God’s plan for Madison to go to a community college.  And again, with all due respect, you have to wonder if we’re supposed to take comfort in the idea of a God who micromanages ever aspect of our lives.

Finally, Hannah learns that a friend is pregnant and thinking about getting an abortion.  Hannah tells her friend that she can’t get an abortion because the Bible says, “Do unto others.”  As Hannah explains it, how would her friend feel if she had been aborted?  Her friend takes Hannah’s words to heart and tells her father that she’s pregnant.  This leads to a montage of her father yelling at her but we don’t hear what he’s saying because a very mid Christian rock is playing over the soundtrack.  Everything works out in the end, of course.  Speaking as someone who has never been comfortable with the extremes of either side of the abortion debate , this whole scene really irked me, as it was very heavy-handed and poorly written.  It’s easy to win an argument when the other side isn’t allowed to present its case.  Just because pro-abortion writers tend to caricature pro-life arguments, that still doesn’t make it any less strident when pro-life writers do the same thing to the other side.

In the end, everything works out.  Emily learns to be humble.  Madison goes to college.  Hannah is hopefully prepared to babysit.  The film ends with one golfer getting disqualified for making a technical mistake, just for Emily to beg that the rules be suspended so that the other golfer can get the trophy she’s earned.  Amazingly, the rules are suspended which really isn’t the way rules are supposed to work.  Apparently, the message is that God’s rules cannot be broken but UIL’s rules are fair game.