When a fundraising email from the California Department of Education arrived in reporter Thomas Fuller’s inbox in November 2021, informing him of a local high school football team’s undefeated season, he thought little of it — until realized it was the Cubs, a team from the California School for the Deaf (CSDR) in Riverside, east of Los Angeles.
“Something about the Riverside Cubs drew me like metal to a magnet,” he writes in “Riverside Boys: A Dull Soccer Team and a Quest for Glory” (DoubleDay).
Upon further investigation, Fuller uncovered an irresistible story of triumph over adversity, and in the book he describes the Cubs’ remarkable journey from perennial losers to championship winners for the first time in the school’s 68-year history.
Much of the credit, he explains, goes to the Cubs’ inspirational coach, Keith Adams, a deaf athlete himself, who instilled an indomitable spirit among his charges. “Teenagers, especially boys, are known for their teenage years for bare monosyllabic conversations,” Fuller writes of Adams, who is also deaf.
“But there was an important change for the Cubs, a kind of inevitable merger.”
Cubs players would run through brick walls for Coach Adams – even if they couldn’t walk.
When Cubs shortstop Felix Gonzales broke his leg, for example, he was especially upset as he came close to hitting 2,000 yards.
Desperate to make the milestone, Gonzales “asked the doctor treating his broken leg if he could get back in the game for just one game. That’s all it would take to make it to 2000,” he writes Fuller.
“No wonder the doctor said no.”
Fostering a rare bond between them as they emerged from COVID, Adams galvanized his players into something greater than the sum of their parts and was determined that their deafness would never be a barrier to success. “It’s not something we’re going to cry about. These are the letters that were distributed to us.
“And you just have to work harder.”
That hard work was overseen by Adams’ assistant Galvin Drake, a 405-pound mountain of a man who ended all his text messages with a flexed bicep emoji. “He was the team’s enforcer, lecturing the players on the importance of lifting weights and eating well,” Fuller writes. “No junk food and soda during the season, he told the student athletes.”
As a deaf team playing in a league full of hearing teams, CSDR encountered many practical difficulties in their quest for glory. Before matches, an interpreter reminded referees that players would not be able to hear the whistle and use hand signals to convey decisions.
They also had to replace the traditional ‘Ready, Set, Hike’! He used to start games with a silent count while the quarterback clapped rhythmically and the center looked through his legs to snap the ball.
The secret, Adams explained, was communication, and the Cubs’ system of coded hand signals ensured everyone knew their role. “The Cubs had another weapon in their arsenal: American Sign Language. They were able to sign to each other from across the field beyond the distance that voice could easily carry.”
Fuller also cites a study showing that deaf people can often see better than hearing people in specific situations, and this gave the pups an advantage. “The neural difference meant that players not only had a potentially wider view of in-game activity. They can also react more quickly to the moves of an opposing team,” explains Fuller.
“Milliseconds count in football”.
Being deaf had other benefits, as Trevin Adams, Cubs quarterback and son of Coach Adams, explains. “I can’t hear their fans or the crowds or the noise,” says Trevin, who is also deaf. “Trash talk, I can’t listen to it. They can get in my face and say anything.”
Deafness wasn’t the only problem for some Cubs players.
Homeless student Phillip Castaneda, for example, slept in his father’s Nissan Sentra every night, getting up every morning and waiting for the nearby Target to open so he could use their bathroom before going to CSDR and soccer practice.
But such was the spirit of the team that Adams created.
“Within the fence that surrounded the CSDR, they were at home in language and culture. It was a reinforced sense of belonging in the locker room and on the field of play. Football players at every high school share the bond of brothers in battle. For the Cubs, it was an even closer connection,” writes Fuller.
The Cubs hit most everyone they faced.
In 2021, they lost just one game when they were defeated 74-22 by Faith Baptist of Canoga Park in the championship game. When the teams met again in the title decider a year later, the Cubs avenged that loss with a crushing 80-26 victory to complete an undefeated season.
As the Cubs celebrated, Keith Adams joked that the whole experience had been like a movie written 60 miles west in Hollywood. “It’s a good ending. We beat them with a perfect record. And we are closing the film”, he says.
“Let the credits roll.”
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