The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory

“The pandemic set back millions of students across America, but for deaf children it was especially hard. Many lived in homes or neighborhoods where no one spoke their language. School was the place they found peers, they learned to advocate for themselves, they came out of their shelves.”

The importance of Deaf communities represents a key focus in Fuller’s book. This passage details the unique challenges faced by Deaf communities during the Covid-19 pandemic, in particular the loss of daily access to other Deaf people. Fuller emphasizes the negative impact the loss of this community had on the students of California School for the Deaf, Riverside.

“Like the Cubs, the Braves considered themselves underdogs. Sometimes when Noli played away games in remote areas, the announcers would refer to them as the Indians, not the Braves, an error that rankled the team.”

Fuller positions his viral article about the CSDR Cubs as the inspiration for The Boys of Riverside. This passage highlights the ways in which implicit social bias such as racism and ableism contributed to prejudicial views of the Cubs and several of their opponents. In this instance, the racism faced by the Noli Indian School Braves defines them underdogs in the eyes of their competition.

“The neural differences meant that players had not only a potentially wider view of activity on the playing field. They could also react more quickly to an opposing team’s moves. Milliseconds count in football.”

Throughout the book, Fuller makes a case for the Benefits of Deafness in Football, citing the experiences of the Cubs’ players as well as scientific research. This passage indicates that Deaf players’ brains adapt to make up for their hearing loss by strengthening their visual abilities. Fuller argues that in football, these minor adaptations make a significant difference.

“For the Cubs, it meant that when they went out into the world together, they were distinct, something akin to members of their own ethnic group. It meant they looked out for one another. They communicated in a different language; they had their own jokes.”

This passage highlights the book’s thematic interest in the importance of community for Deaf people. Fuller suggests that the Deaf community functions like an independent “ethnic group” because of their shared language and their unique cultural quirks and jokes.

“Epée’s work demonstrated to the European elites that deaf communities on their own had no inherent disability: they could communicate fluidly with one another in sign. The barrier that existed was when a deaf person interacted with the hearing world.”

Fuller includes the history of advocacy for the development and recognition of sign language to emphasize the Importance of Sign Language Education for both Deaf and hearing populations. The success of the CSDR football team suggests that Deaf people can achieve extraordinary things when freed from the expectations and restrictions of the hearing community.

“Dominic had attended seven different schools in his fifteen years of life, but none had quiet worked out. He was a good student, generally getting As and Bs, but as a deaf boy in hearing schools he found his social life frustrating.”

This passage reflects the book’s thematic interest in the importance of education in the Deaf community. The fact that Dominic has trouble succeeding in schools with hearing teachers and classmates despite his academic talents speaks to the isolation and ostracization Deaf students often experience outside of their community. Here, Fuller contrasts Dominic’s negative experiences at his hearing school with the ways in which he was encouraged to thrive at CSDR.

“On the CSDR campus, visitors who did not know ASL were the outsiders, or, to use another word, were handicapped by their lack of sign language. Like monolingual American tourists in Tokyo, it was on them to find a way to make themselves understood.”

Throughout the book, Thomas Fuller pushes back against the idea of deafness as a disability to be treated or cured. In this passage, he flips the concept on its head, suggesting that hearing visitors to CSDR are handicapped by their inability to understand the dominant language at the school: American Sign Language.

“With Darwinism came the notion that signing was a rudimentary communication system closer to ape than man. In the lingo of the time, sign languages were the domain of the ‘savage.’ It was in this context that educators decided to ban sign languages at the 1880 Milan conference.”

This passage demonstrates the ways in which scientific research and writing has negatively affected the Deaf community. Charles Darwin’s monumental research and theory of evolution outlined in his seminal work, On the Origin of Species, speculated that sign language was a lower form of communication, leading to its exclusion from Deaf education. Later neurological research showed that sign language is processed in the brain the same way as spoken language.

“Instances of rejection are still sharp in Kaveh’s mind decades later. He remembers not being able to buy an ice cream cone because the shop attendant did not have the patience to follow the boy’s gestures. ‘I was constantly treated like I was just an idiot,’ he said.”

Although the book focuses on the experiences of Deaf student-athletes in the United States, this passage suggests that anti-Deaf prejudices exist across the world. For Kaveh Angoorani, this negativity and prejudice remains with him for the rest of his life and informs his work at CSDR as a teacher and coach.

“Kaden Adams, who had been blocking for his brother in the pocket, went down, clutching his ankle. He would nurse it for a few minutes on the sidelines and reenter the game, playing for the duration. Stunningly, an X-ray would later reveal the ankle had been broken. He played through the pain.”

This passage reflects the importance of the Cubs’ football program to the student-athletes of CSDR. The fact that Kaden Adams finishes the championship game with a broken ankle epitomizes the players’ dedication to supporting their teammates and succeeding as a team.

“The Super Bowl also featured deaf performers at halftime, part of what the NFL said was a focus on inclusion. A spokeswoman for the league said the Cubs and deaf performers have been invited because they were ‘defying stereotypes.’”

After Fuller’s article about the CSDR Cubs goes viral, the team is invited to participate in the coin flip at the 2022 Super Bowl in Inglewood, California. In this passage, Fuller attempts to explore the distinction between inclusion and tokenism, suggesting that the Cubs’ were used to signal the NFL’s commitment to diversity and inclusion in the wake of the wake of DEI efforts in the early 2020s.

“There has been a movement over the past two decades to design facilities used by deaf people in architecturally appropriate ways. […] Hallways would be wide enough so that groups of people could sign to one another as they walked; single file does not allow for ASL conversation.”

This passage reflects the structural obstacles facing Deaf people in the hearing world, and the ways Deaf architects and activists try to build spaces for Deaf communities. The irony of this passage is that, despite being purpose-built as the California School for the Deaf, the CSDR campus still reflects the need for improvements to fit the needs of the Deaf faculty, students, and staff.

“Without fail, his online colleagues would be very surprised. ‘No, you’re making that up. Are you serious?’ they would say. And then they got over it.”

Fuller uses the example of CSDR lineman Andrei Voinea, a talented video game developer in addition to his skills on the football field, to highlight the prejudice Deaf individuals face in both educational and professional settings in the hearing world. This passage highlights the ways Andrei’s adult colleagues in the video game industry hold certain unacknowledged biases against the Deaf community. Although his ability to hear has no impact on his ability to code and design games, they insist he must be lying about his deafness.

“As game time approached, the scene was disorienting for the Chadwick players for another reason: the national anthem was not part of the proceedings, and there was no announcer, nothing auditory except for the constant whoosh of cars passing on the nearby freeway.”

Throughout the book, Fuller suggests that deafness offers concrete benefits for the players of the California School for the Deaf, Riverside. In this passage, he suggests that hearing players who play at CSDR are at a concrete disadvantage because of the relative quiet of the campus and stadium.

“Paul Hubbard, the quarterback for Gallaudet University in 1894, had faced a series of fellow deaf teams. His solution was to tell his teammates to meet before the play in a circle, backs toward any prying eyes. The huddle was born. […] Hearing coaches took note, and the practice spread across the Midwest and then throughout the country.”

This passage reflects the book’s interest in the ingenuity and achievements of the Deaf community. The fact that the iconic football huddle was developed by Deaf athletes contradicts the assumption—repeated by hearing athletes throughout the book—that Deaf football players lack the talents and football knowledge of their hearing counterparts.

“But he ran into a mental roadblock, not in his head, but in those of the hearing coaches, who were skeptical that they could deal with a deaf quarterback. How would he communicate with the rest of the team? How would he tell the wide receivers and linemen the next play in the huddle?”

The coach of the Indiana School for the Deaf’s football team, Michael Paulone, is a legendary Deaf athlete who was the only Deaf quarterback selected for Philadelphia’s All-Star high school football team. Despite his obvious talent, he was initially relegated to a fourth-string backup—a slight Fuller positions as rooted in the prejudice of the hearing world against Deaf athletes and coaches that believe one’s deafness clouds their ability to play or coach effectively.

“The ease of the sign-language conversations that Delia had been enjoying with other deaf parents in the stands would soon be replaced by the language barrier that the deaf community encounters whenever they step into hearing settings. Delia and her son would ultimately go to five hospitals; some medical staff would tell her that they did not accept her Medicaid insurance.”

This passage reflects the intersectional obstacles affecting many of the players at CSDR. After his season-ending leg injury, Felix and his mother face layers of obstacles, including language barriers and financial pressures related to their health insurance. The fact that the family uses Medicaid insurance positions them as low-income and demonstrate the challenges they face getting adequate care for Felix’s injury. These intersectional obstacles make it difficult for many of the CSDR families to succeed.

“The NFL version had one flourish that seemed to strain the truth slightly. The Cubs might have been smaller than some of their opponents, but they had proven that they were often physically stronger. This was certainly the verdict of the coaches and players on opposing teams.”

While filming pre-game activities, the NFL documentarians following the CSDR Cubs’ season ask to revise Coach Adams’s speech to his players in order to make it more dramatic. This passage suggests that the inclusion of a line about how the Cubs are smaller and less strong than their opponents is false, and that all players involved know it. Fuller indicates that the NFL’s desire to tell an underdog story supersedes their sense of responsibility to portray the team’s abilities accurately. Their attempts to frame the Cubs as physically weaker, smaller, and less competitive are both inaccurate and reflective of an overt ableist bias.

“When he thought about it later, he calculated that it was worth the risk. ‘If it’s a choice between pneumonia and winning the championship, I’ll take pneumonia,’ Kaveh said. ‘Pneumonia is only temporary. Winning is forever.’”

Throughout the novel, Cubs players and coaches play through injury and sickness in order to achieve their goal of winning the state championship. In this passage, Fuller exemplifies the team’s dedication to each other and their community through the coach description of this decision as a calculated risk taken because the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

“[We are] thankful that we have two schools that recognize that Jesus Christ is the God of the universe and the author and protector of our faith. Lord, I pray that as the young men compete today that they would do so not for the glory of themselves but for the glory of Christ.”

Through the book, Fuller draws parallels between the Deaf community at CSDR and other religious, cultural, and ethnic communities, highlighting the Value of Team Sports for Identity Formation. This passage suggests that, in the same way Deafness unites the Cubs, their opponents from a devout Christian school are united by their shared faith. However, Fuller contrasts the emphasis on selflessness in their pre-game prayer with their players’ prejudiced remarks after the championship game.

“For the Cubs, their common bond, their ‘social identity,’ was clearly deafness. The team’s players and coaches were from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds […] They had varying complexions and came from families with starkly different income levels. […] What the players had in common was the way they communicated.”

Fuller cites the work of sports psychologists to support the idea that teams are most successful when they have a shared identity that unites them, rather than a focus on individual success. Fuller attributes the success of the CSDR Cubs to their shared identity as Deaf athletes, which unites them across cultural and socio-economic lines.

“All but a few colleges declined to take him. […] Keith, a prodigious talent on the field, had hit a wall. Not because of his football abilities, but because he was a deaf kid in a hearing world.”

In the final section of the book, Fuller suggests that CSDR head coach Keith Adams was motivated to lead his team to the championship because he was never able to fulfil his own football dreams. The contrast between Adams’s own experiences as a player and the opportunities and support he provides as a coach the progress of advocacy for and awareness of deaf culture and the need for continued efforts to sustain that progress.

“The officials and coaches conferred for a drawn-out discussion over whether to run the clock, as the regulations called for in lopsided games. Faith Baptist resisted. ‘It’s a championship game. Let them play,’ Coach Davidson said of his players. ‘They are losing, but that’s okay. It’s good for them to learn how to win and to learn how to lose. And do both with grace.’”

The Cubs dominate the championship game so thoroughly that a mercy rule is put into place to run the clock continuously in the final quarter, rather than extend the game through time-outs. The contrast between the Cubs’ defeat the previous season and their dominance in the 2022 championship game illustrates their progress as individuals and as a team and positions the narrative arc of their season as a redemption story.