SI Vault: Running For Their Lives: The story that inspired 'McFarland, USA' - SI.com
Thanks to a selfless coach, the sons of Mexican migrants in a dirt-poor California town turned their backs on drugs and gangs and built an athletic dynasty. Then Ayon threw his arms around the coach's wife and cried, "Why did God do this. " and the boys in red and white each staggered off alone to cry. They had failed the most successful coach in California schoolboy history. They'd failed the elders who'd walked at their heels to the starting line, reminding them that they had to win the state championship for Mr. White. They'd fallen apart on the old man's last day as a coach, they'd spit on his dynasty and ministry both. White's wife went to dry their tears. But then she and the elders began crying too, and it was hopeless. No high school sports program in California had ever done what theirs had--won nine state titles--but it had been this team's duty to send Mr. White into the sunset with the untouchable number, the fitting number, the perfect number: 10. One by... Laundry sagged from plastic lines like skin from the brown dogs' ribs. Workers, home from a long day of picking grapes, sat inside their stucco box houses as if stoned by the sun. Not a peep came through the doors of El Cha Cha Cha. Something just stirred on the southwest edge of town. Source: www.si.com
