SD coach's story could hit silver screen in 2013

ABERDEEN, S.D. — Hollywood silently came to Aberdeen this month.

Moonglow Films producers were scouting locations for a movie about former Northern State basketball coach Don Meyer. After lining up the movie’s talent and finances, they hope to start production this year and release the independent film into theaters next year.

“The story really attracted me a lot, and it became a no-brainer for me right away,” said Brad Wilson, a Hollywood veteran of 32 movies who is executive vice president of Moonglow. “And then you meet Coach Meyer, and you are just mesmerized by the guy. You come away a believer.”

“My Many Sons” is the working title. Part of the movie will be shot in Aberdeen and part of it in Nashville, Tenn.

Meyer was a longtime Lipscomb University coach in Nashville, where he coached Lipscomb to a national championship. Before he retired as the NSU coach in 2010, Meyer became the winningest men’s basketball coach in NCAA history. Along the way, he nearly died in a 2008 car crash, discovered he had cancer, had part of his left leg amputated and won a bunch of national awards, including the 2009 ESPY for the Jimmy V (Jim Valvano) Award For Perseverance. Meyer, also a nationally known motivational speaker, is the subject of an award-winning book.

Brad Wilson, the producer, was in Aberdeen for a couple of days with Moonglow business partner and Meyer movie co-producer and screenwriter Carol Miller.

“I have been doing this a long time, and Carol is one of the best writers I have ever had the pleasure of working with,” Wilson said.

Also in town was Casey Bond, who pitched the movie to Moonglow. Bond, who played pitcher Chad Bradford in the 2011 film “Moneyball,” is expected to have a role in the Meyer film in addition to being producer.

Bond, a former standout baseball player at Lipscomb University, was a Major League Baseball draftee who spent a couple of years in the minor leagues with the San Francisco Giants organization.

The Meyer movie idea was floated at Lipscomb, which had a “Moneyball” premiere last fall featuring Bond. Lipscomb administration officials told Bond he should make a movie about Meyer.

After Bond had returned home to Los Angeles, while he was working out one day, he started thinking about Lipscomb and Coach Meyer’s story.

“I just had an epiphany on how this movie could be done. So I got ahold of Brad and told him, ‘I have this amazing story.’ He was into it and believed in it right away. And the idea just blossomed from there.”

But the petals almost came off the flower when the idea landed on Miller’s desk.

“Brad is always bringing me things to write,” Miller said with a laugh. “I already had an overwhelming amount of things to write. He said, ‘It is this inspirational story about this basketball coach, the winningest coach in the history. And he had this automobile accident . . . ”’

She had her doubts, and they were serious.

“I am not really interested because I don’t really write Lifetime-type of scripts. It is not my genre,” Miller told Wilson.

Wilson, however, was persistent.

“I just knew she would be great at writing this because she had sons who were athletes. Her husband was a coach, and she had done some coaching herself. I knew she knew the subject matter and would be perfect for the project.”

Miller relented and took on the project. First, she read the books on Meyer written by ESPN baseball analyst Buster Olney (”How Lucky You Can Be: The Don Meyer Story”) and by former Northern State player Steve Smiley (“Playing for Coach Meyer”).

“I really got a feeling for Coach, and I related right away because my and my husband’s coaching philosophy jived with that of Coach Meyer’s,” Miller said. “So I got him right away.”