McFarland

This past weekend a movie was released that focuses on Mexican American students in high school during 1987and that movie is called McFarland USA. Set in the dusty San Joaquin Valley of California, “McFarland, USA” brings to light a world of underdogs and misfits in a racially segregated, predominantly Hispanic town. Jim White, played by a grumpy yet endearing Kevin Costner, shines in his role as a misunderstood teacher and parent who has suffered through failure time and time again. He ends up in McFarland, a poor farming community north of Bakersfield, Calif., where the high school principal reminds him he is running out of options. White takes the job as physical education teacher and assistant football coach. His wife (Maria Bello) and two daughters reluctantly join him in moving into a modest McFarland bungalow whose previous occupant has left a Virgin of Guadalupe mural on an interior wall (Kenneth Turan LA Times). The Whites' neighbor at their new home offers them a housewarming gift—a chicken.
White quickly clashes with the head football coach and loses his assistant coaching slot. During a gym class, his students (all Latino, seemingly all of Mexican heritage) are less than motivated. But when White gets them to finally run some laps, he notices that a few of the boys are pretty speedy. California's high school sports governing body has just created the state's first cross-country championship. White thinks McFarland could form a team. All it takes is a minimum of seven runners, some shoes, and some cheap uniforms.
"Cross country—that's a private school sport," the principal says. "They breathe different air than we do."(Johnny Dodd, People.com)
White forms the team, but now he faces the difficulty of explaining the cross country's tangled team scoring system, where the low score prevails. Just like golf, the coach tells his team. "Do we look like we play a lot of golf?" one of the team members tells him (Turan).
In fact, for several of the students, most of their waking hours outside of school are spent doing something far from golf or any other leisure pursuits: they work the fields in the morning and after school. The three Diaz brothers, the core of the cross country team, help their father harvest cabbages.
When Señor Diaz says they can no longer run on the team, White joins the boys in the cabbage field to get a taste of the back-breaking work. We can feel his pain and thirst as he hunches over the rows of produce. After a memorable enchilada dinner at the Diaz home, the father relents and lets the boys continue running with the team as long as the practice schedule is tailored to accommodate their work duties. “Many of White's runners would rise at 4 a.m. to head out into the fields with their family, often putting in 12 hours of back-breaking work before returning home to get some rest. Then, around 6 p.m., they would head back out into the fields. But instead of climbing rickety ladders up into pistachio trees or cutting bell peppers from tangled vines, they'd be dressed in shorts and running shoes.” (Dodd)
The Whites grow fond of their Latino neighbors, who throw a quinceañera for their older daughter, Jamie (Elsie Fisher), as she turns 15. And Jamie has taken an interest in one of the boys on the cross-country team, though that leads to a scene involving some neighborhood violence that seems a bit ginned up to add drama to the story.
When it comes to competition, the team of poor Latino students inevitably gets some disrespect from the wealthier suburban teams they run against. But the McFarland students gel as a team, and the poor school in the valley qualifies for that first state cross-country meet.

Citations
Dodd, J. (2015, February 20). Meet the Real-Life Hero Coach Played by Kevin Costner in McFarland, USA. Retrieved February 26, 2015, from http://www.people.com/article/mcfarland-usa-jim-white-cross-country-coach

Turan, K. (2015, February 19). Retrieved February 26, 2015, from http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-mcfarland-20150220-column.html