College of Charleston Alumna Wins Emmy for Sports Documentary

When you think of Afghanistan, chances are you don’t think about skiing. But in the central highlands about 100 miles northwest of Kabul, you’ll find the Bamyan Ski Club. There are no lifts – and many of the members have to make their own skis out of scrap wood and poles out of tree branches – but their laughter and joy at flying down the powdery hillsides are very much the same you’d find in Aspen, Deer Valley or Lake Tahoe.

That world – and the coach, Alishah Farhang, who knit it together – is the heart of Champions of the Golden Valley, which took home the 2026 Emmy for “Outstanding Sports Documentary: Long,” beating out the likes of ESPN, Netflix and HBO Max, in May. The director, cinematographer and editor Ben Sturgulewskki produced a film of uncommon poignancy and power.

In addition to executive producer Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner in history, executive producer Liz Stiff ’06 was instrumental in the film’s ascent. Her gift isn’t pointing a camera, but mobilizing people, partners and purpose so a story can travel.

“Independent docs live or die by the coalition around them,” she says. “My job was to think about audiences, acquisition and distribution – to get the right reporters, human rights groups and refugee organizations into screenings so they could see the film as a tool to further their mission.”

Narrative Impact

That mindset is something the political science major learned in Hollis France’s Think Globally, Act Locally class while at the College of Charleston.

“I remember for years after that course struggling with the idea of, What am I supposed to be doing?“ says Stiff. “It was very much a spiritual process because I believe that God gives us all a purpose in life.”

Then, in 2011, Stiff’s friend, Jo Jensen, introduced her to the idea of impact producing.

“She was the one who really opened my eyes to how documentary film can be paired with nonprofits to create kind of lasting, measurable change,” says Stiff. “That was really how I began to understand the power of an engaged citizenry and narrative influence.”

The idea of how sport can unite people, which is at the heart of Champions, is something she first learned from her dad, Bob Dyar, growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina. His nonprofit, CEDE Sports, trains churches around the world how to use sport to build relationships. (He also was known to sneak his three children out of school on a really great snow day to go ski the slopes around Boone, North Carolina.)

“My father always said sports and music are the two universal languages,” says Stiff, who joined her dad when he traveled around the world to see that philosophy in action. At home, she says, “we were really encouraged to build relationships with people we maybe didn’t necessarily agree with based on one of those two things. And so, being a part of this film was actually a really unique way to honor my dad and his love of building trusting relationships over something like skiing. So being able to tell that story through this film was a huge full-circle moment for me.”

Opportunity for Ideas

One of the first films she worked on was Honor Flight, a 2012 documentary about World War II veterans, which drove home the lesson of how film narrative and civic engagement can move people to action. She then founded a digital marketing agency that won a Los Angeles Emmy in 2019 for work with the LA Kings before selling it in 2020 to start have her two children. She launched Little Lion in 2023 – named for the maxim “Truth is like a lion: You don’t have to defend it; just unleash it.” The company helps academics, thought leaders and filmmakers shape ideas and shepherd them to the audiences who can use them.

“Think tanks and researchers aren’t always great at getting ideas out broadly,” she says. “We pair idea with opportunity.”

One of six documentaries the company has worked on, Champions premiered at the Tribeca Festival in 2024 and has played at more than 50 festivals, scooping up accolades and awards before the Olympics acquired it in December 2025.

The film follows two different periods in Afghanistan and Farhang’s life: before and after the government’s fall in August 2021, when the U.S. pulled out and the Taliban took over. Farhang fled to Germany because he had a bounty on his head for teaching girls to ski. The pain of not being in his village, not being able to be there for the boys and girls of Bamyan, is palpable. To Farhang, that was the real definition of winning.

“He says, ‘I use sport to build champions, but champions aren’t just people who win. They’re people who show up for their community, their spouses, their kids,’” says Stiff. “That everyday champion idea – it felt Tocquevillian, that industriousness of showing up to build the world you want. That’s what he’s doing.”