11-year-old Akeelah Anderson has a way with words. After winning her schoolwide spelling bee, she decides to enter the competition, despite her classmates' derision and the antipathy of her mother Tanya. Thanks to the efforts of her teacher Dr. Larabee, she reaches the finals. As she gets to know her fellow competitors, Akeelah realizes that coming first isn't everything in life.
Hardened by years in foster care, a teenage girl from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood decides that wrestling boys is the only way back to her estranged father.
West Philadelphia basketball star Sergio Taylor deals with the pressures of fame while his brother and sister have their own issues with ambition.
