Fans of such high school football films as Remember the Titans and the Christian indie Facing the Giants may want to add the small documentary Walking On Dead Fish to their shelf of motivational movies.

Created by Franklin Martin and narrated by former National Football League quarterback Terry Bradshaw, Walking On Dead Fish looks at the part high school football played in helping mend lives torn by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The school in question is East St. John High School in La Place, La., a town just west of New Orleans. When Katrina swamped New Orleans and forced massive evacuations, La Place was where some 20,000 refugees stopped and stayed. A high school at capacity with 1,500 students soon found itself pushing 1,900.

A football program headed by Coach Larry Dauterive, “Coach Do” to his players and students, had to deal with 20 new players from different high schools, public and private. More important, Dauterive, principal Debra Schum and the ESJ faculty had to cope with students separated from their families, students whose families had lost homes and jobs, students whose worlds had suddenly and traumatically changed.

In football-crazy Louisiana, Dauterive and Schum decided to use East St. John football to provide stability, unite a divided enrollment and give a release valve for the stress suffered by the hurricane victims.

As Martin records the unfolding story, mixing in disaster footage and interviews of young players, their parents and other adults, it becomes more than a simple motivational film.

Players who see a football scholarship to college as their only way out of La Place fret when their playing time shrinks. Players quit in frustration, then attempt to return to the team. A team seeking unity among old and new players finds itself unexpectedly winning.

In what becomes an important storyline, ESJ senior running back Stanley Jackson sees his scholarship hopes wane when one of those displaced by the hurricane, junior running back John Owen from the private Brother Martin prep school, bumps Jackson out of his starting position.

Martin’s documentary occasionally shows its shoestring budget, but he captures a slice of life whose characters and problems ring true.

High school football isn’t a universal remedy, but as Walking On Dead Fish shows, there’s more to it than X’s and O’s, more than wins and losses.