Director Niki Caro’s sports drama fictionalizes a true story about believing in oneself, dreaming big, and never giving up even in the face of daunting odds. Kevin Costner stars as Jim White, a washed-out California high school football coach. White loses his job and moves to another school, lower in the social and professional pecking order.
His first McFarland batch had no background in running, and White himself had no experience coaching cross-country teams. Yet they went on to win nine state titles within 14 years; he coached every team. Not one relative of those boys from that first 1987 batch had gotten past the 9th grade.
The boys were so poor that they couldn’t afford practice time, let alone money to purchase proper shoes and uniforms. Before and after school, they were helping their parents, largely farmworkers, to work, earn, and save up. Under White’s guidance, however, all seven boys attended college; some became teachers, trainers, or counselors: one, a police detective, and another, a writer who later joined the U.S. Army.
White’s secret? He got those boys to shape up, then believe in their own present and future instead of settling for a narrative based on their past. Their past said that they’ll stay “pickers” in farmlands or end up in jail like most of the neighborhood’s boys and men.
In more privileged schools, White’s students, handed things on a platter, breathe entitlement. In McFarland, California, nothing’s ever on a platter; his students breathed fatalism. They wondered if success, of any kind, would always elude them. White pushes back. Life may have forced them to overcome some obstacles, but now they must choose to overcome others. No, losing isn’t hard, he says, “What’s hard is losing when you know you haven’t done enough.”
Doing Your Best
In their first big race, Team McFarland’s up against very hilly terrain. They falter. Regrouping, White leads them to giant canopied heaps of almond hulls on a farmyard resembling mounds, if not hills. He simulates running on hilly terrain, telling them that from now on, “When we see a hill, we smile. The higher, the better.”From White, the boys learn to transform seeming adversities into assets. They recognize that pace isn’t everything; a steady rhythm is vital. Teamwork is as important as individual effort and interdependence as crucial as independence. There’s no freedom without responsibility and restraint.
Even his running mates poke fun at Danny Diaz (Ramiro Rodriguez), the bulkiest, heaviest set boy. He’s a painfully obvious outlier in an otherwise lean, mean endurance running team. But White pulls the sulking Danny aside and says, “You’re important.” The boy brightens when told to play the role of a steadying anchor alongside more volatile runners.
All the boys want pretty much the same things: popularity with the girls and respect from other boys. White convinces them that wantonly getting into fights, dropping out of school, ending up in juvie, or attempting suicide won’t win them any of these things. He shows them how to be man enough to own up to their mistakes, learn from them, and keep pressing ahead. After the team’s first big loss, White manfully takes ownership for not doing his homework on terrain that they were clearly unfamiliar with and for not readying them enough.
When his little daughter, Jamie, points out that the boys run awfully fast, White’s humble enough to accept that she’s right; that’s when he first sees running as an alternative to football. When he’s in over his head coping with temperamental runners and docks family time, the boys’ parents teach him to prioritize family alongside work, and not let one suffer at the expense of the other under a misguided sense of professional integrity.
White commends his boys for their honesty, grit, and hard work, saying “You kids do it every day … your parents hope they can do it every day and they’ll do it for a lifetime, if it means a better life for you. ... There’s nothing you can’t do with that kind of strength, with that kind of heart. You kids have the biggest hearts I’ve ever seen.”
