Synopsis

Tucson, Arizona, 1993. Anna, a 5’11” forward, is the most valuable player on Catalina High’s Lady Trojans girl’s basketball team. She’s sixteen, blond, gawky and prone to tears. And she’s in love with Quinn, the tough, worldly, African-American center. Quinn, three years older, is already at home in Tucson’s working class lesbian bars. She dates a 30-year-old and juggles other lovers on the side. Along comes Vanessa, another powerful player competing for Anna’s love, and Anna finds herself trapped in a turbulent love triangle.

When she’s not at practice, Anna is exploring Tucson’s underground lesbian scene and getting deeper and deeper into a world where she, a 16-year-old jock, is out of her element. Lady Trojans focuses on the relationships between Anna, Quinn, and Vanessa, exploring the intensity of teenage love and sexual discovery in a foreign and, at times, threatening environment. Using old home video and still images taken from yearbooks and snapshots, as well as candid interviews with the Lady Trojans, filmmaker Elizabeth Hesik recreates this not-so-distant past as a vibrant memory-scape of teenage love and desire.

Returning to Tucson ten years later, Anna searches for Quinn, Vanessa, and the Lady Trojans in an attempt to reconnect with the lesbian community she came upon as an innocent 16-year-old. Through interviews and story-telling, this film reveals a group of women whose lives were profoundly affected by their experiences as members of the Lady Trojans.