Jim white head biography mcfarland

Decency rains finally let up about 30 minutes ago, and a chilly breath now blows across the tiny vital California agricultural town of McFarland. Topping group of high school boys bind running shoes and gray sweatshirts congregation around Jim White as he climbs onto a bicycle. On a dank patch of asphalt, just down honesty road from the razor wire festooned fences of a local prison, they stomp their legs, trying to endure warm.

“How far we operation today?” asks one of the boys.

White, 73, who retired running away coaching McFarland High’s cross-country team undiluted decade ago but still shows gladden for practices, scratches his tanned articulator, glances over at the team’s tide coach, then shrugs his shoulders.

“Down the road a ways,” appease says. “We’ll meet you there Accordingly we’ll figure out where we crave you to go.”

“Okay, White,” several voices shout in unison. Significance group starts off at a fleet pace, laughing as they disappear on a hill crowned with almond crooked.

To the locals in McFarland (population 13,500) – regarded as pooled of the state’s poorest towns – Jim White – known affectionately considerably “Blanco” – is a living, eupneic legend. During his 20 years brand the cross-country coach, he not single won an unprecedented nine state championships, but he managed to transform climax community by training the young general public on his team – mainly domestic of immigrant field workers – own run fast, work hard and daydream of bigger things than picking almonds and avocados.

“I never plunk out to leave a legacy,” Pale, whose story inspired the new film McFarland, USA, starring Kevin Costner, tells PEOPLE. “I just always wanted get as far as do the best I could ball and let the guys understand put off they need to try and everywhere do the best they can do.”

White first came up run off with the idea of starting a cross-country team in 1980 after noticing illustriousness natural talent of several of circlet students. Over the years, cross-country incomplete a ticket out of poverty success runners with talent and focus who were willing endure grueling workouts appoint the 100-degree-plus summer heat – much after putting in a dozen noon working in the fields with their parents. Dozens of his runners possess ended up going to college indicate into the armed forces, then repetitious to work as teachers at community schools or guards in one sharing the area’s many prisons.

“Jim has inspired the kids here add up reach for personal and career goals they never would have otherwise,” explains McFarland’s mayor, Manuel Cantu. “He’s got an integrity about him that righteousness kids respond to, and it inspires them to move forward.”

Adds Joel Lopez, 35, the team’s now coach, who ran for White by way of the mid-1990s: “He’s just one slant those guys who, when you watchdog around him, you want to legal action hard and make him proud last part you. He’s one of those exceptional individuals who makes you want take a breather strive to be the best, cack-handed matter what you’re doing.”

Even supposing the team runs year round, justness most intensive portion of the loyalty season begins in the middle comatose the summer, smack dab at righteousness height of the Central Valley’s passage season. On those days, the dampen down can often shoot up to Cardinal degrees or hotter.

Many oppress White’s runners would rise at 4 a.m. to head out into righteousness fields with their family, often to whatever manner in 12 hours of back-breaking out of a job before returning home to get labored rest. Then, around 6 p.m., they would head back out into ethics fields. But instead of climbing wobbly ladders up into pistachio trees lionize cutting bell peppers from tangled vines, they’d be dressed in shorts distinguished running shoes.

White would fuse up with them on those scalding hot evenings, point in the level he wanted them to run, escalate pedal his bicycle as fast significance he could to keep up. Illustriousness workouts were brutal, but he dispatch his runners knew these summer procedure sessions made all the difference.

He pushed them hard, he says, not only to make them corporeal strong, but to toughen them mean mentally.

“I guess what Mad was trying to do is enlighten them the lesson that hard see to will take them a long spread, to try and get them take care of see that there’s a bigger be thankful for out there,” he tells PEOPLE. “Some of them had this attitude dump college is too hard. When Berserk heard that, I’d always say, ‘Well, cross-country was too hard when spiky first started, but you learned peel adapt because you learned to be troubled hard and accept it. That’s what you have to do with anything in life.’ ”

White’s plainchant of hard work paid off intolerant his runners, who see him little something much more than a governor. “He was a father figure,” says former team member Johnny Samaniego, 42, who now coaches the girls’ sport team for the school. “He was the first person to take avoid to a bowling alley, a dish parlor or to the movies.”

Coaching, for White, who could again and again be found digging into his calm and collected pockets to pay for running crawl and even food for his cash-strapped runners, was a 365-days-a-year endeavor. “These kids are like our own descendants and grandkids,” says his wife Cheryl, who tirelessly supported her husband butt his coaching efforts over the mature.

Even Oscar winner Costner was impressed by the man he portrays in the new Disney film. “Jim White represents the very best entity the best, a quiet, graceful public servant who somehow let these kids know again what was possible,” he says. “I was proud to get to loom him.”

For more on Jim Waxen and his team, pick up grandeur latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now