• Thomas Bonifield

That Explains It!

The whole cross-country thing in "Overcomer" seemed a curious choice until now.

Alex Kendrick with his children Julia and Caleb after a cross-country race. Image: Alex Kendrick/Instagram.

The latest Christian movie from the brother duo of Stephen Kendrick and Alex Kendrick, Overcomer has been in theaters for seven weeks now. Having brought in more than $34 million, it has been a big success and currently sits in 19th place all time at the box office in the Christian genre.

Alex, who directed and co-wrote the picture with Stephen, plays the lead role. His character - John Harrison - struggles with his self-worth when the high school basketball team he coaches loses its best players and he is forced to coach cross-country; he knows nothing about the sport, hates running and has a team that consists of a single runner, played by Aryn Wright-Thompson.

That seemed like an odd choice for the plot when we saw the movie. Oh, it works well enough, but since cross-country is not the most popular sport, we were curious as to how it ended up in the movie. Turns out Alex Kendrick has a real-life family connection: his two youngest children both run cross-country. Son, Caleb, who also plays his character's son in the movie, and daughter, Julia, both recently won medals in a competition in their home state of Georgia.

In a social media post that Alex called a "proud papa" moment, he said his son recorded a personal best at the meet and his daughter "won her THIRD straight individual state championship!" Bravo, Julia and Caleb! And thank you for clearing up the mystery about why your dad and uncle chose cross-country for the movie.