Movie Review: "McFarland, USA"

I was eagerly anticipating the movie McFarland, USA for months. As a high school cross-country coach, I was particularly interested in how this terrific sport would be portrayed in the film. As a Disney movie, you would probably expect that the emotion of the particular true-life situation would be well-covered, but who knows if they would get the running part right.

Overall, I think they did an excellent job. One thing I had to remind myself was that the story was from events in 1987, when I was not involved with high school running at all. My only year of high school cross country was in 1978, and I started coaching in 2010. Then again, people will see how the sport is portrayed and assume that the vibe is the same.

Here's what I saw that they got right:

Running cross country is hard. There are hills, rough trails, tough competition, and other challenges, so it takes a lot of hard work to succeed. The film showed the runners training very hard, and suffering in the races. The characters in the story succeeded partly because they already knew how to work hard, so all of that made sense.

They really do have a prison almost right next to the high school. I thought this might be an embellishment to make the story more dramatic, but a quick visit to McFarland via Google Earth confirms that the prison - with barbed-wire topped fences and all - is literally about a block away. I imagine that they probably do indeed run past the prison on some training runs.

They actually might use a pedestrian overcrossing of Highway 99 as a "hill." In the movie, McFarland hosts a meet, and the course traverses the freeway using a pedestrian overcrossing - the one hill on the otherwise flat terrain. Sure enough, there is one of these right near the school. If I were laying out a course for a cross country race in the neighborhoods near the school, I would likely use this feature. In fact, the "hills" we have the kids train on where I coach in Alameda, CA are bridges that link the main island with the peninsula part of the city, which rise a whopping 10 feet at most.

The portrayal of the Latino families as being friendly and family- and communty-oriented people is 100% consistent with what I know of this community. My dad spent his tween and teen years in the Central Valley as a migrant farm worker and had many friends whose families originally came from Mexico. His stories of these families is just like in the movie. Also, the families in the film were not recent immigrants, which I also understand is consistent with reality. This, of course, led to some funny moments when Kevin Costner's character didn't know that some of the people spoke English as well as he did.

But what did they get "wrong," if anything?

For one thing, they show one of McFarland's chief rivals as Palo Alto High School. This just isn't true, as Paly High is about 4-5 hours from McFarland - there's no way they would have been a frequent rival. I don't see any scenario that they'd be facing one another in a meet of the size they showed in the movie (maybe in a huge invitational or in the State Meet). I guess they needed to have a school with wealthy families, and people have heard Palo Alto fits that bill, but they could just as easily have made up a "rich" school for McFarland to run against.

The borderline trash-talking between the runners is something I have never seen. The runners I see either ignore the others (because they're busy talking with their own teammates) or happily chat with them. Actual current high school runners routinely congratulate each other without being prompted to do so.

Same with the coaches making snide remarks to the Kevin Costner character - none of the dozens of coaches I know would even think of doing that. In fact, one of the reasons I enjoy coaching high school cross country is that the coaching community is so friendly. It's quite common for experienced coaches to volunteer training advice to newer coaches so they can help their kids more.

The 1987 State Meet was held at the site where they currently hold it, Woodward Park in Fresno. It would have been pretty cool to actually film the movie there - I guess it was probably more expensive than just finding a park near Hollywood.

The film made it look like McFarland was the top team in the state in 1987. I don't know the exact times they ran, but they were actually the top team in the small school division that year. Typically (although not always), schools from the larger school divisions are stronger than those from the smaller ones.

One other thing was that the film made it appear that McFarland only had a boys team, but over the years, they have not only had girls teams, but actually had several girls teams that finished in the top 10 in the state. Cross country meets always have both boys and girls present (they don't compete at separate venues, like in, say, basketball), so it looked a little weird to me to see only boys running around.

Overall, though, this is a film that every cross country runner or potential future cross country runner should see. The cast is outstanding, especially some of the minor characters like the school principal (Valente Rodriguez) and Señora Diaz (Diana Maria Riva). Kevin Costner (as Coach Jim White) does a good job at not screwing up the movie - I'm not always a fan of his, but I think he does quite well in this role. The food shown in the movie... well, let's just say I left the theater drooling. I will definitely be buying the DVD when it comes out so I can share this movie with all of the high schoolers I coach in the future.

Get that "Killer Instinct"

Before I go any further, let's be sure to understand that the phrase "killer instinct" in this context has nothing to do with harming anyone. I have often written about how great the sportsmanship is in the sport of cross-country, so we're not talking about anything that would hurt someone else.

What I do want to tell you about is a heightened level of mental intensity while competing, and even while training. When I was in college, there was a woman in my dorm who was the top badminton player in the country. She went on to compete in two Olympic Games. She taught several of us in the dorm how to play, and was laid-back, patient, and fun when teaching us. There were a few times when she and I played as a mixed doubles team in pick-up games.

This is where it got a little scary.

My friend became the Godzilla of the badminton court. She was 100% respectful and sportsmanlike in her words and actions, but there was a whole other level of intensity that was way beyond anyone I had ever played with in any sport. Way beyond. Did I say "way"?

When I reflected on this, both immediately after and years after, I realized that this is a characteristic of many successful athletes. They probably have physical skills that are somewhat greater than the rest of us, but not that much greater. The difference, though, is the level of mental strength and focus. These athletes feel an intensity so great that they will expend effort beyond what other people will do to succeed, both in training and in competition. The best ones are also "intense" about knowing when to back off to avoid injury, by the way - yes, it's possible to rest with intensity.

This is what I call the "killer instinct." It's analogous to a lion who is really, really hungry for that gazelle, and will expend enormous effort to chase it down. In cross-country, there are many times when there are just a couple more runners within catching distance, and if a runner can just give a little more effort, they can catch them and shave a couple more points off of their team score. Most runners will try to catch them; only a few runners will have that "killer instinct" to go beyond what they think is a maximum effort and actually catch them.

As most leagues around the country are winding down toward league and regional championships, it's time to bring out that killer instinct. For some people, it comes naturally; for others, it can be learned. Yes, have fun, enjoy being around your teammates and competitors, but when you head to the starting line, let's see that lion's gaze, searching for that gazelle.

Book Review: Cross Country 101 by Dan Martinez

One thing that I don't cover too often on this blog - OK, never, actually - is reading. Well, I just finished reading Cross Country 101 by Dan Martinez, which is a novel set at a Southern California high school. Why am I telling you this? Because the story centers around a high school freshman who joins the cross-country team. The target audience seems to be pretty much the same as this blog, which is, more or less, 7th-10th graders.

I really enjoyed the book. At first, I was suspicious that it was going to be an overly corny kid-with-football-dad-gets-bullied-but-succeeds-in-XC type of book. While it's true that that pretty much sums up the basic storyline, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't overly corny - indeed, it wasn't corny at all. Despite an intended audience much younger than I, I found myself entirely engaged with the story, and even rooting strongly for Eric, the protagonist. As I got deeper into the book, I found myself reading faster and faster, as if I were training and racing with Eric, and it was harder and harder to put it down each day.

I found some parts of the story foreign because I neither experienced nor observed any kind of bullying when I was in high school. I also never found that upperclassmen were mean or even unkind to the freshmen. This is also the case at the high school where I coach now - the coaching staff is constantly on the lookout for bullying and even guys or girls being less than nice toward each other. We're lucky we don't seem to have these problems. The parents I know are all very supportive of their sons and daughters running cross-country, too. In the book, Mr. Martinez handles it all very well, and it's great to see the team come together, as well as Eric's father get on board with seeing cross-country as a "real" sport.

Finally, if you have ever run at the State Meet course at Woodward Park in Fresno/Clovis, you will appreciate Mr. Martinez's accurate depiction of it in the book. I have never been to Mt. SAC, but he clearly knows what he's writing about for that course, too. Being able to visualize parts of these actual courses as Eric and the rest of the team race there is great fun and helps to draw you into the story.

Finally, I definitely finished the book hungry for more stories about Eric - what happens in his sophomore year? Junior year? Senior? Does he get recruited and run in college? This is a character that I found I really cared about, and I think you will enjoy reading Cross Country 101 as well.

Available on Amazon: Click Here

Dan Martinez's web site: Click Here