The first time I attempted to run a 5k was in the spring of 2015. It took me over 40 minutes, and I stopped 12 times. But during my short spurts of running amidst my sitting on the curb and hurling up my lunch on the neighbor’s front lawn, I felt like I was flying. I felt like Thomas Valles from “McFarland, USA.”
I felt like a triumphant underdog.
My first experience with “McFarland, USA” — a movie about a high school cross-country team composed of immigrant farm workers — was when I watched it in theaters with my older brother in February of 2015. He was a high school cross-country runner. I was a scrawny fifth-grader who had never run more than a mile in my life and was just happy that my older brother was giving me the time of day. We sat in dingy, excessively-sticky theater seats for the entirety of the film’s two-hour runtime. I didn’t regret a second of it.
The movie has the perfect roster of characters for a Disney sports movie: a coach (played by Kevin Costner) with one last chance to save his crumbling career and a team of high school misfits facing personal hardships.
Those characters contribute to the perfect uplifting sports movie formula: the underdogs band together to win the championship—based on a true story.
It is simple, and it works.
It works because everyone feels like an underdog.
Seeing Danny Diaz — historically the team’s worst runner — grit his teeth up the last hill in the championship made me think that I could run a 5k, disregarding the fact that I had never done so before. Hearing the coach holler, “That’s not Danny Diaz,” as Danny barrels down the homestretch still brings tears to my eyes.
If he can do it, maybe I can too.
I watched “McFarland, USA” at least ten times as 2015 gave way to 2016, and I impatiently waited to have my own shot at glory: middle school cross-country.
My first meet hurt a lot.
During it, however, I kept thinking back to the words of Costner’s character Jim White: “I want you to look at them, and I want you to look at each other. And I want you to ask yourself, ‘Who’s tougher?’ My money’s on you.”
I wanted to be tougher.
So I kept going. I ran consistently until my freshman season — my first year finally joining the big dogs in high school — when I tore the cartilage in my hip during a mile-repeats practice on a muggy Friday afternoon.
I was devastated. I had put so much time into the sport. I felt stronger and faster than ever before, but that didn’t matter. I was done.
The night after the injury, I watched “McFarland, USA.”
I cried a lot.
I cried for my lost season. I cried for Thomas Valles after his father hit him in the face. I cried after Jim White told Valles, “Right now, I’m guessing running’s the best thing you’ve got. Feels as if it’s the only thing you’ve got.”
Running felt like the only thing I had too.
In a year, however, I had fully recovered. But after sitting out most of my freshman year, I started my sophomore season feeling like an underdog.
That sentiment followed me into my entire cross-country career. My hip injury flared up at least twice a season, I was out for tendonitis a handful of times and the arch of my foot kept collapsing.
But the McFarland team picked cabbage in the fields all morning, went to school, went to practice and then went back to the fields — I think I could handle a bit of leg pain.
When I started college, I made the agonizing decision to quit competitive running because of my injury history.
The McFarland runners still followed me, even though I was no longer a part of a sports team. After changing my major four times, which left me leagues behind my peers academically, I felt like an underdog. When the theater department — one of my biggest passions besides running — dissipated before my very eyes, I asked myself if I was tough enough to withstand the hardship of rebuilding it. I was.
I am.
“McFarland, USA” is not the highest quality sports movie in existence. As an Iowan, I can’t even rank it as the best Kevin Costner sports movie. But it’s still the most impactful one to me.
That is because everyone, including me, feels like an underdog in some way.
“McFarland, USA,” along with other uplifting sports movies, reminds people that underdogs like them can still come out on top. Athletes feel inspired to keep working at their sport, even if the odds are stacked against them. Non-athletes see hope in overcoming obstacles in their paths to success.
It sounds cheesy, and it is. Uplifting sports movies are the definition of cheesy. But they work because people want to see underdogs win.
People are also selfish. They don’t want to win by default. Everyone wants to be the one who faced the mountain and climbed it. Even if people may not like climbing the mountain, they like the idea of emerging triumphant on the other side.
Humanity is full of people who like the idea of being successful underdogs.
At least a little piece of everyone wants to hear Kevin Costner tell them, “The odds are stacked against us, but you guys are superhuman.”
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