Allee Sutton Hethcoat | Through the Shattered Lens

In this 2019 sequel to Remember The Goal, cross country coach Courtney Smith-Donnelly (Allee Sutton Hethcoat) finds herself coaching at the college level. One of the runners that she coached in high school, Brittany (played by Bethany Davenport), is now the best runner at Bethany University. In fact, she’s the second best runner in the nation! Coach Michaels (Clarence Gilyard, Jr.) brings in Courtney to work with Brittany while he deals with some health complications.

So, pretty much all the stuff that happened during the first movie happens during the second. Once again, everyone doubts Courtney’s training methods. Once again, Courtney takes it upon herself to tell all of the runners how to live their lives. Brittany’s father gets angry when Courtney tells Brittany to run slower than usual. Considering that Courtney is now a local celebrity because of how well the cross country team did in Remember the Goal, you might think that the other coaches would know about her techniques and would prepare for them. But nope. No one has any faith in Courtney’s ideas but she’s vindicated in the end. In fact, over the course of two movies, Courtney is never once incorrect about anything. To be honest, that’s kind of annoying.

The main difference between Remember The Goal and The Perfect Race is that Courtney is a thousand times more preachy in the sequel. In the first film, she cited a verse from Corinthians and later talked about Jesus raising a girl from the dead and that was about it. In The Perfect Race, it’s rare that a scene goes by without Courtney saying, “Do you remember the story about….” and then offering up a Biblical lesson. It gets a bit tiring and, again, it’s hard not to get bored with Courtney having all of the answers all of the time. For example, when she’s told that the track team doesn’t practice when its raining, she promptly asks everyone in the room to raise their hand if their parents are divorced. Courtney goes on to explain that, if you’re not willing to train while it’s raining, you probably won’t be able to make a marriage work either. WHAT!? You know what else might end a marriage? Dying of pneumonia.

For a film about athletics, The Perfect Race is a very talky film. Unfortunately, most of the conversations are very repetitive. When Courtney tells Brittany to slow down during one of her races, we got several scenes in a row of people asking each other why Courtney did that. Brittany’s father asks Brittany why Courtney told her to slow down. Brittany replies that she doesn’t know. In the very next scene, Brittany’s father tells Coach Micheals about what Courtney told Brittany to do. Coach Michaels asks Brittany’s father why Courtney did that. “I don’t know,” Brittany’s father replies. Coach Michaels asks Brittany why Courtney did that. “I don’t know,” Brittany replies. In the next scene, two rival coaches talk about Brittany slowing down. One coach asks, “Why did she do that?” “I don’t know,” the other coach replies. And it just kept going and going until eventually, I wanted to throw something at the TV.

Anyway, my frustrations aside, Courtney is triumphant at the end of the movie, largely because Courtney is perfect and never makes any mistakes. Did I mention how annoying that can get?

This film inspired me to go for a run, if just to have an excuse to stop watching it. And, before anyone asks, I do not like carrots.

The 2016 film, Remember the Goal, is all about running track.

Well, actually, I guess it’s not all about running track. It’s also about the importance of teamwork. It’s also about the importance of remaining humble, respecting authority, and doing what your coach tells you to do. In short, it’s a film that makes me happy that I wasn’t on the track team in high school. I’m not really a fan of authority or doing what other people tell me to do. For that matter, I’m not really much of a team person. I’m an individualist who enjoys being around other individualists. I’m a big believer that people can work together while still allowing everyone to do their own thing and at their own pace.

In short, Coach Courtney Smith-Donnelly (Allee Sutton Hethcoat) would probably not want me on her track team and that’s okay. Though I will say that, a few years ago, I took up running because I was told that it might help to ease my asthma and it totally has. I start nearly every morning with a good run. I enjoy running. It helps me to clear my head and get my thoughts in order. Plus, it keeps my legs looking good.

But anyway, back to the film.

Courtney is the new coach at the local Christian school. Unfortunately, her coaching techniques prove to be controversial. She wants the members of the track team to pace themselves and to only run at a certain tempo, even if it means losing the race. Courtney is trying to teach the team how to conserve their energy so that they’ll still have it when they get to State. All of the parents, though, are upset because they want their daughters to win every race instead of spending all of their time preparing for the state competition. They’re also not happy when Courtney starts tells them that they need to stop putting so much pressure on their children and instead just have faith in Courtney’s plans.

Meanwhile, the five girls on the team all deal with typical high school problems. One of them likes a guy but her father has forbidden her from dating and, since this is a Christian film, she decides to honor her father’s wishes. Another girl has just started smoking weed and, when confronted about it, she replies (quite correctly) that the Bible doesn’t say anything about smoking. She also points out that most teenagers her age are experimenting with new things. “An alcoholic starts with just one drink!” her friend replies, “A drug addict starts with just one joint!” Uhmmm, that’s not really true but it’s enough to get her friend to give up the weed with roots in Hell.

This is another Dave Christiano film that takes a popular genre — in this case, a sports movie — and uses it to push a faith-based message. The coach continually quotes Corinthians and the end of the film literally compares coaching a cross country team to Jesus raising the dead. It’s a bit much, even if it’s not quite as preachy as his earlier films. (No one is condemned to Hell in this film, for example.) Christiano makes the unfortunate decision to have the final race play out in slow motion. That’s several minutes of nonstop slow motion. Unfortunately, slow motion and running are not a great combination, especially when some members of the cast are obviously more experienced runners than others.

Anyway, the main message here (beyond the religious one) seems to be that there’s no “self” in team. What fun is that, though? I’ll keep running for myself.