48 pages • 1-hour read
The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory
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Chapters 28-37Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 28 Summary: “I’m Playing! I’m Playing!”
As the playoffs approach, the Cubs’ star wide receiver Jory Valencia is diagnosed with walking pneumonia, keeping him out of school and off the football field for over a week. The first playoff game is against the Leadership Military Academy Wolfpack, a team that almost beat them earlier in the season. Jory insists on playing, and the coaches agree, feeling that winning is the most important thing. He is taken out after just four plays. The Cubs dominate the game, and the coaches take out all the starting players except right guard and CSDR student body president Christian Jimenez. On a routine running play, Christian receives a hard hit, fracturing his right leg and ending his season. The Cubs win 52-6.
Chapter 29 Summary: “The Wicks and the Bombs”
The Cubs’ win against the Wolfpack fills the team with confidence, and the players begin to believe that they will win the championship. Their opponents in the semifinal, Flintridge Prep, are equally confident. The Flintridge offensive coordinator Ramses Barden won a Super Bowl ring with the New England Patriots, while the head coach, Russell White, remains the all-time rushing leader for the University of California Bears. The Flintridge coaches encourage their players to focus on the Cubs’ skills, not their deafness. After a close first half, the Cubs win the game 58-28. As the Cubs leave the field, Coach Adams turns the scoreboard to 74-22 to remind the players of their humiliating loss in the championship the prior season and encourage them to focus on the upcoming championship game.
Chapter 30 Summary: “An Apparition on the Practice Field”
The Faith Baptist Contenders defeated the Grace Brethren Lancers in order to secure their place in the championship. The Cubs’ coaching staff prepared for the 2022 championship game—now a rematch of the 2021 game—by pouring over film and memorizing the Contenders’ plays. In order to prepare to face a 6’9” player, they recruited a tall teaching aide to practice with the team. The coaches plastered the locker room with photos of Cubs players crying after the previous year’s humiliating loss. Coach Adams received text messages from other head coaches in the league with advice on how to defeat the Contenders. Two days before the championship game, Christian Jimenez returned to practice wearing a leg brace, insisting that he was willing to risk further injury in order to play in the championship game.
Chapter 31 Summary: “Playing with Fire”
On Friday afternoon, the Cubs traveled two hours to Birmingham Community Charter High School in Lake Balboa, California, for the championship game against Faith Baptist. Although Faith Baptist had the right to host at home, they agreed to move the game to Birmingham High in order to accommodate more spectators. Despite the move, fewer CSDR fans attended than had been at the previous year’s game. The media presence was also diminished, to the relief of the players. Like the Cubs, the Faith Baptist Contenders were confident in their ability to win the game. The first quarter of the game was hard-fought, but the Contenders took an early lead. Coach Adams began to worry that the Cubs would lose a second championship game.
Chapter 32 Summary: “The Psychology of Winning”
The work of David Lavallee and other sports psychologists shows that intangible things like teamwork and belonging are as important to success in athletics as strength and speed. In particular, social identity theory suggests that teams comprised of individuals who can relate to the collective identity of their team are more likely to be successful. For the Cubs, the shared collective identity is their deafness, which helps to bridge the social, ethnic, and class differences between the players. The resilience and relationships the Cubs develop as a team also helps them to succeed. Fuller argues that, win or lose, the confidence and social bonds the Cubs developed over the season would benefit their lives.
Chapter 33 Summary: “The Throw”
As the first quarter of the championship game continued, the Cubs tried a number of plays that they could not successfully execute the previous year. On one play, Trevin Adams completed a successful pass to Cody Metzner, who ran for 30 yards before a flag was thrown for holding, and the ball was moved back. Demoralized, the Cubs tried another ambitious passing play, which was also unsuccessful. The Cubs ran the ball successfully, but were unable to complete first down. At the fourth down, Coach Adams signed for the team to try one last time. Moments before a lineman tackled him, Trevin Adams threw the ball 20 yards to Gio Visco, who caught it and ran to the two-yard line. The Cubs scored on the next play, taking them into the lead with one minute to go in the first quarter.
Chapter 34 Summary: “Blocking and Tackling”
As the game progressed, the Cubs transitioned to focus on defense. They shut down two plays that had been successful the previous year, sending a powerful message that they were not the same team Faith Baptist previously defeated. When Faith Baptist punted for the first time in the game, the Cubs intercepted and ran the ball back. The CSDR coaches called a rapid-fire mix of running and passing plays, disorienting the Faith Baptist players. Christian Jimenez managed to stay on his feet for most of the first quarter, but was tackled in the second and considered leaving the game. Despite his injury, he stayed in and helped hold off the Faith Baptist offense. At halftime, the Cubs led Faith Baptist 42 to 12.
Chapter 35 Summary: “College Dreams”
As a student at CSDR in the late 1980s, Keith Adams did not have the option to play football with his Deaf classmates. Instead, he played at Lincoln High School in Stockton, with his brother serving as his interpreter. Adams was supported by Lincoln High coach Jim Rubiales, who recognized his talent and understood the need for inclusion. Although Adams was a star defensive end for Lincoln High, he received little attention from college scouts, who believed they could not accommodate him in programs at university level. Adams played briefly at a California community college before transferring to Gallaudet University. As coach of the CSDR football team, Adams was hopeful his sons could experience things he was denied.
Chapter 36 Summary: “That Kid Can Play Anywhere”
Jim Perry, president of the Southern Section of the California Interscholastic Federation, watched the game from a folding chair behind the endzone in order to maintain his neutrality. Like the Faith Baptist coaches, he was impressed by the athleticism and determination of the CSDR Cubs, and the fact that they were winning without Felix Gonzales, the team’s strongest player. The Cubs began the second half with an impressive onside kick and continued to dominate the game for the rest of the half. As the final quarter began, officials discussed whether to run the clock continuously as part of the mercy rule. The Faith Baptist coach insisted that his players should finish the game normally, but he was overruled. The Cubs scored twice more, and won the game 80-22.
Chapter 37 Summary: “You Guys Deserved This”
As the Cubs and Faith Baptist lined up to shake hands after the game, the Faith Baptist quarterback refused to shake. Instead, he pointed at each player and demanded to know if they could hear him. Afterwards, he told his teammates that the Cubs players were lying about being deaf, insisting that they could hear. Fuller speculates that he was embarrassed by the fact that he had lost to a deaf team. Jim Perry and the Faith Baptist coach both congratulated Coach Adams on the team’s success, calling the game an inspirational example of football. Felix Gonzales and Phillip Castaneda (who was removed from the team for violating school rules) congratulated their teammates. As the players celebrated, Keith Adams imagined the final credits in a film about their season.
Chapters 28-37 Analysis
The final chapters of The Boys of Riverside conclude the team’s narrative arc and their two-year quest for a championship, following a classic structure of the inspirational sports genre of literary nonfiction. In this final section, author Thomas Fuller builds suspense by speeding through the quarterfinal and semifinal games and then stretching his description of the championship game across six chapters. This structure helps to build anticipation for readers, mimicking the experience of watching the final game as closely as possible. The first three chapters of this section each detail a single game of football. Chapter 28 describes the Cubs’ win over the Leadership Military Academy Wolfpack, Chapter 29 describes their victory over Flintridge Prep, and Chapter 30 describes the semifinal game between Faith Baptist and Grace Brethren that sends Faith Baptist to meet the Cubs in the state championship game. The quick pace of these short chapters—each under ten pages long—creates an escalating sense of propulsion that drives the narrative forward to its climax.
Fuller abruptly halts this momentum by extending his description of the championship game over the next six chapters, further building the narrative suspense and dramatic tension. Chapter 31 begins “with hours to kill before [the] 7: 00 p.m. kickoff” (201) and ends “with 6: 38 left in the first quarter” (209). Chapter 32 moves away from the primary narrative to discuss “the psychology of winning” and only addresses the Cubs’ championship game briefly in the final paragraph (32). As if to reinforce the chapter’s distance from the primary narrative, the opening line of the chapter introduces sports psychologist David Lavallee as “a high school student in the 1980s” (210). This sudden shift forces the reader to wait on the game’s climactic conclusion.
Fuller draws out his intricately detailed portrayal of the final moments of the 2022 championship game to emphasize the team’s climactic win, underscoring his argument for the Value of Team Sports for Identity Formation. Chapter 33 returns to the game, describing the action play-by-play and ending “with one minute left in the first quarter” (215). The fact that, like Chapter 31, Chapter 32 concludes before the end of the first quarter helps Fuller to maintain narrative suspense, leaving readers wondering how the Cubs will fare. Chapter 34 continues the description of the game, ending at halftime. Rather than depicting the Cubs’ locker room discussions at halftime, Chapter 35 returns to the past, describing CSDR head coach Keith Adams’s struggles as a Deaf youth football player, positioning the Cubs’ championship game within the context of a long history of advocacy for Deaf athletes and communities, underscoring his argument for the Benefits of Deafness in Football. As in Chapter 32, this chapter opens with the phrase “in the late 1980s,” pulling the reader out of the present and firmly into the past. Fuller returns to the present in Chapter 36, which finally culminates in the Cubs’ victory. The structure of these final chapters adds an extra layer of drama to the final game of the Cubs’ season.
Fuller’s description of the CSDR coaching staff’s preparations for the final game highlights their use of classic motivational tactics in sports competition, positioning the Cubs within a long tradition of competitive athletic programs. After the Cubs win their semifinal game, sending them to the championship, Coach Adams requests that the scorekeepers replace that game’s final score with “the humiliating score from the 2021 championship” (191). Fuller explains that, “even as they celebrated this semifinal win, Adams wanted the players to reconnect with the agony of last year’s final game” (191). The use of the words “humiliating” and “agony” in these passages suggest that Adams believes reliving their 2021 loss would help motivate them for the 2022 rematch. Later, Adams doubles down on this attempt to “inspire his players” by filling the team’s locker room with photos “of Cubs players crying in anguish at their defeat against Faith Baptist the previous year” (194-195). The photos show the players “staring vacantly ahead with tears rolling down [their] cheeks […] sitting dejectedly on the turf; and […] covering their eyes in grief” (195). Fuller’s use of the terms “anguish,” “grief,” and “dejected” reflect the intense emotions Adams hopes to inspire in his students. In depicting these tactics, Fuller provides a window into competitive sports culture—in both Deaf and hearing communities—and its use of shame and humiliation as motivators for success.
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