FROM LEFT, MICHAEL JOHNS and Seth Anderson of Mountain Media Works, record Iron Mountain High School basketball coach Bucky Johnson as he is interviewed by and Eden Laase of the Upbeat online sports outlet. The Iron Mountain-based video company Mountain Media is partnering with UpBeat on an in-depth story of the Mountaineer boys basketball team as they make another bid for the state championship after last year’s controversial loss. (Theresa Proudfit/Daily News photo)

IRON MOUNTAIN — A local video company is filming a documentary on the Iron Mountain boys basketball team as the Mountaineers make another bid for the state championship.

Eden Laase and her husband Bryce Derouin, founders of Upbeat online sports, approached Seth Anderson and Michael Johns, co-founders of Mountain Media Works, after seeing a project they produced for the Kingsford High School.

They have set up a Go Fund Me page to raise $20,000 for the project.

“For me, as someone who grew up here, and I think for Michael, who was always into sports, too, we were really interested right away,” Anderson said.

Former newspaper reporters Lasse and Derouin started Upbeat online last year and began covering Iron Mountain basketball right away.

“It just happened that this really big team kind of fell into our lap. We knew they were really good, so we had to cover them. We started covering them at the beginning of the year and watched them the whole way,” Lasse said.

“The whole way” included the controversial Division 3 boys basketball state title game against Pewamo-Westphalia in East Lansing in March. Two calls against Iron Mountain lead the opposing team to two game-winning free throws in the final seconds of the game.

“We developed relationships with the coach and the kids, got to know them and got to see how crushing it was for them,” Lasse said.

Titled “One Minute” the documentary will chronicle the season, game by game, all while reflecting on last year, the history of Iron Mountain basketball and the future of the players. Mountain Media Works and Upbeat are equal partners in the film that is expected to be finished by this coming fall.

“We are raising money to make this movie, but this isn’t a money-making scheme. Bryce and I just really felt like sometimes as writers or as journalists you come across a story that you are meant to tell. That is what we thought about this. It’s so compelling and the kids are great kids with good personalities — so many things coming together, there is no way we could not tell people this,” Lasse said.

This team only has this one chance, she noted. Some of the players aren’t going to be here next year; some of last year’s team already are gone.

“For us, it was the sports here, the community around it, and how the entire Upper Peninsula came around the team as well. I’m in Norway and I saw the banners driving out of Norway. Being young and you have this big chance really, really young and how does that affect you. We’re interested in all the different parts of it,” Anderson said.

And Anderson thinks it isn’t just locals who would watch the documentary.

“We are looking at making this and then finding a way to distribute it, hopefully attracting distributors like Apple, ESPN, because we feel the story is universal,” Anderson said, adding, “I don’t think we can set a limit on what we can do here.”

“I think a wider audience that doesn’t know the U.P. and is still interested in sports at the high school level, there is actually something universal about the story,” he said. “We’ve been saying it’s the underdog of the underdog. Iron Mountain is the underdog, the U.P. is an underdog and them getting that far, it’s like Rocky.”

Lasse agrees. “You have some great personalities and interesting kids that are really compelling and I felt like other people can relate to the story and be inspired by it. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime kind of deal. Kids like Foster and Marcus aren’t going to be here anymore. Marcus is a senior and Foster is a junior and they lost big pieces of the team last year that won’t get the chance to do it again. I’m from Colorado and I’ve lived all over the place, but I’ve never found a community that cared about high school sports like this one. There is this little pocket and this team that is so crazy-talented and people don’t even know where they are located,” she said

While Lasse says the story is important to tell, she insists the team isn’t dwelling on last year and that they are only focusing on this season.

“The way everything went last year, it was the most heartbreaking thing, not only for these kids but for the whole U.P. Once a team gets that far, everybody is backing them. Now coming to this season, we get to see how determined they are and how hard working they are. The team really wants to move past last year’s heartbreak. They don’t want to talk about it anymore. The hard thing is, in a town like this, where everyone cares about it, that’s all anybody else wants to talk about. They want to be able to make their own legacy and have people stop asking about last season,” she said.

To contribute to the documentary, go online to https://www.gofundme.com/f/onemindoc.

All sponsors of the project are appreciated, Anderson said, and the team pledged to find a way to get any local businesses that would like to contribute on the project.