Maximum Potential

Maxwell Jones is head coach for USC’s men’s track program with a reputation for womanizing. He is banned from the NCAA for life when his post-loss freak-out is caught on cellphone video and goes viral. Maxwell loses his coaching job and the dream job he was just offered with Nike. In an attempt to salvage his reputation and get the Nike Job back, his agent, Jamie, secures him a job as head coach for a girls’ track team in the elite world of Los Angeles private schools. The athletic director, Mary Margaret O’Donnell, needs to win a championship to get tenure, so she and Maxwell make a pact to work together even though they loathe each other. Maxwell’s coaching style puts him at odds with the school and especially with assistant coach, Savannah Castro. Maxwell is slowly sabotaging everything until he gets wind of the unfair treatment of Immaculate Heart and the blatant favoritism that other track teams receive. This irks Maxwell and he becomes focused on winning. Unfortunately for Maxwell, his team is small and full of non-athletes. After multiple bad practices, he tries to illegally recruit athletes to his team by sabotaging the soccer program. The ploy backfires when Maxwell only picks four soccer players. The remaining soccer players sabotage the team by anonymously confessing to a cheating ring on the soccer team, causing all the soccer players to lose their eligibility. Running out of time, Maxwell begins to train his team the traditional way. He has a chance encounter with the daughter of the one of the school’s trustees, a gifted but troublesome athlete, and makes a deal with her to anchor his 4 X 400M relay team if he can get her transferred to Immaculate Heart. Immaculate Heart competes well at league finals and finds themselves in a three way tie for the championship. In order to win, it has come down to the 4X400M relay that he’s recruited Alexis to anchor. It’s an extremely competitive race, but Alexis falls in the home stretch, losing the championship and Maxwell’s dream job. The only thing more shocking than the loss is the professional way that Maxwell accepts it. AD O’Donnell is so impressed that she offers Maxwell the head coach position for the following year and he accepts it without hesitation. Days later, we see Alexis in the car with her parents as she convinces them to pull over at a local 7-Eleven to use the restroom. She enters the store and promptly exits the back door to the rear parking lot where Maxwell is leaning against the wall. He hands her an envelope full of $20 bills and we learn that Maxwell bribed Alexis to throw the race in order to get sympathy and build an honest reputation with the school. Alexis demands to pick her own events next season and when Maxwell refuses, she threatens to tell O’Donnell about the whole plan. Maxwell is left speechless, as Alexis returns to her parent’s car.