McFarland, USA

Danny Diaz was not overweight as a child. He was the seventh man on the team, yet he still played a part in winning the 1987 state championship.

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Jim White did not found the school's cross-country team; he restarted it after it had been dropped for a year. He re-established both the boys' and girls' cross-country teams, even though the film shows only the boys' team. Similarly, White took both the boys' and girls' teams to the California coastal beach at Cayucos in the 1985 season (not 1987).

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Jim White was not fired from numerous teaching jobs before starting at McFarland. After graduating from Pepperdine University in 1964, he began teaching in the McFarland school district.

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Jim White retired in 2003 after twenty-three years of coaching.

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Principal photography took place in Camarillo, California, and many McFarland residents appeared as extras in the film.

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Jim White and his wife Cheryl have three daughters, not two. Their eldest daughter, Tami, does not appear in the film. Julie and Jami are portrayed as somewhat younger than their real ages at the time McFarland won its first state championship in 1987 (all three were in college at the time).

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Colombian music superstar Juanes was approached to write the film's theme song. "Juntos/Together" was performed at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards (2015), the first Latin song granted that privilege in a decade.

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From 1980 to 2003, Jim White's teams won nine state championships in Divisions III and IV, along with numerous smaller titles.

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Not all of the runners from the 1987 team appear in the film. Because director Niki Caro wanted to show more families, team member Luis Partida was replaced by Damacio and Danny's brother David Diaz. However, Diaz had graduated a year before McFarland won its first state championship.

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Damacio Diaz would make headlines in 2016 after being accused of police corruption. He would be sentenced to five years in prison.

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The film is based on the real 1987 McFarland High School cross-country team and their real-life coach, Jim White.

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Jim White was 45 or 46 in 1987, while Kevin Costner was 60 when the film was released.

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McFarland was never a rival of Palo Alto and never competed against it. McFarland is a four-hour drive from Palo Alto.

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The film was released a year after its book.

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On Canadian television, the film's title was shown simply as "McFarland," with "USA" removed.

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For one year, Kevin Costner attended Mt. Whitney High School in Visalia, California, forty miles north of McFarland.

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The "Lo n Slo" used in the film is Ramon's license plate from the animated film "Cars," featuring Lightning McQueen.

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The film is based on the true story of a cross-country team from a majority-Latino high school in McFarland, California, in 1987.

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All promotional materials in Canada, including posters and TV spots, removed "USA" from the film's title and referred to it only as "McFarland."

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The film was originally scheduled for release on November 21, 2014, under the title McFarland, but was pushed back to February 20, 2015, to avoid competing with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014).

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There are two other towns in the United States named McFarland: one in southern Wisconsin and another in northeastern Kansas.

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During the California state competition, the runners passed by the Griffith Observatory in California, the same location where Arnold Schwarzenegger's character arrived in The Terminator (1984) and Terminator Genisys (2015).

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Jim White (Kevin Costner) was the subject of a long-distance dedication on the popular radio program American Top 40 on February 1, 1986, when one of the members of the McFarland Cross Country team dedicated the 1984 Matthew Wilder song "Break My Stride" to him.

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It is the 243rd live-action film produced by Disney.

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Kevin Costner had previously been considered for the role of Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story (1995), which was also distributed by Disney.

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