'The Boys of Riverside' chronicles school for the deaf's rise to state football champions

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: But first to a team that defied expectations.

In 2021, the football team at the California School for the Deaf made it to the state championships, but suffered a disappointing loss. In 2022 and 2023, they made it back and won. Now a new book chronicles that historic run and the abilities that make these players particularly formidable on the field.

Stephanie Sy has a look for our ongoing coverage of the intersection of health and arts, part of our Canvas coverage.

Stephanie Sy: At the California School for the Deaf-Riverside, the Cubs are gearing up for a three-peat.

Coach Keith Adams, here using sign language to call plays, has led the team to two state championships in their eight-man football division. But it wasn’t always this way. The decades-old scoreboard hearkens to a time when the Cubs rarely had winning seasons. That ended in 2021, when they entered the championship undefeated.

Thomas Fuller, Author, “The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory”: You had all of these deaf players who when they were younger had played on hearing teams, and it was very frustrating. So all of these players came together here and they felt this brotherhood, they felt this camaraderie, and I think that was part of the winning formula.

Stephanie Sy: Journalist and author Thomas Fuller started following the Cubs in the fall of 2021. His New York Times article described the rise of the all-deaf team, which beat hearing teams time and again that year.

Woman: Underneath these Friday night lights, there is something special happening.

Stephanie Sy: The article attracted national media attention by the likes of “The Kelly Clarkson Show” and World News Tonight with David Muir.

David Muir, “World News Tonight” Anchor and Managing Editor: Running back Enos Zornoza, number 2, signing this: “Deaf people can do anything. We’re not the stereotype that’s out there.”

Stephanie Sy: Soon after came a pledge from California’s governor to fund a $43 million athletic complex at the school.

Thomas Fuller: I just wanted to have a camera shine on the feelings that these players had being together and the bond that deafness gave them.

Stephanie Sy: Now Fuller has published a book about the Cubs, “The Boys of Riverside.”

It’s more than an American underdog to undefeated story. It looks at deaf culture, a term he writes encompasses an entire class of people and their way of life. At a book event at the school, the intergenerational bonds of deaf families was on full display and fervent applause greeted the journalist.

Thomas Fuller: And I came in and I said, I love this team. I love your story.

Stephanie Sy: After the 2021 season, Fuller took a leave of absence from his job at The New York Times to write the book, following the Cubs throughout the next season. Game after game, he noticed something.

Thomas Fuller: The question of, what’s a disability? And here’s a team where everyone is deaf, all the players, all the coaches. And yet they are using deafness as an advantage, as an edge.

Stephanie Sy: His reporting included interviews with experts outside football, including David Corina, a cognitive neuroscientist, who explains why deaf people may have what he calls hyper-abilities, starting with the way they take in what they see.

David Corina, Center for Mind and Brain, U.C. Davis: Well, for a deaf person, that span of attention is spread further out into the periphery. OK, so it’s like that flashlight is a much broader beam.

Stephanie Sy: More like a floodlight?

David Corina: Yes, yes, that’s great. It’s more like a floodlight than a flashlight. Right. That’s good, with the caveat that I don’t mean it to be necessarily brighter, but it’s just covering greater area.

Stephanie Sy: Vision essentially steps up to fill in blanks left by the lack of auditory cues. Quarterback Kaden Adams is a senior this year. He explained what it’s like through interpreter Julie Hurtis (ph).

Kaden Adams, High School Football Player (through interpreter): We rely on our eyes, so we see the movement a little bit ahead of time. So we kind of think two steps ahead more so than a hearing team. We’re much more alert.

Stephanie Sy: Corina says the science also suggests that deaf people are more attuned to movement around them. That could be an advantage, for example, to a wide receiver.

Watch Jory Valencia intercept this pass in a 2021 game, which the Cubs won by 11 points.

David Corina: If you are able to detect that, hey, that ball is going to be headed in my direction, you might be able to pivot earlier and actually catch the ball than a hearing person, who doesn’t have those initial milliseconds of extra processing time.

Stephanie Sy: And there’s another hidden advantage, the team’s use of sign language, in this case ASL, or American Sign Language. It’s not only more efficient than jogging back and forth from field to huddle.It’s unifying.

Junior wide receiver Gio Visco recalled how it felt to play on a hearing team when he was younger through interpreter Mark Bajarski (ph).

Gio Visco, High School Football Player (through interpreter): But like AAU, I do like playing on the hearing team, but communication is always an issue, frustration when trying to deal with a coach and trying to communicate with the coach. Now, if you have a deaf coach, then that is better.

Stephanie Sy: Coach Keith Adams, who himself played on deaf and hearing football teams growing up, says the team’s success comes from the support’s unique to being at a school for the deaf.

Keith Adams, Head Football Coach, California School for the Deaf-Riverside (through interpreter): They come from various backgrounds, different skin color, different status, family status. The commonality is, they’re deaf. And I think that helps.

I think the — those who experienced maybe mainstream education, it was a lonely time. They just have so much more opportunity as a deaf student going to a school for the deaf.

Stephanie Sy: Multiple generations of families have attended the school and come back to teach or coach. Students range in age from 18 months to 22 years, and all receive a bilingual education, meaning English and American Sign Language.

By high school, well, the cafeteria is a hive of teen expression, like you would see at any other high school.

April McArthur is the school’s superintendent.

April McArthur, Superintendent, California School for the Deaf-Riverside: I think one of the biggest challenges that deaf children face is language access. There is a stigma related to sign language. So, with this book and the attention that has been shown, it really does show that sign language in itself is a language just like any other language.

And deaf children have the right to have access to that.

Stephanie Sy: McArthur says the attention brought by Thomas Fuller’s reporting has led to an increase in interest and enrollment.

For the author, writing “The Boys of Riverside” was what he called a tonic from his typical stories, covering homelessness, the pandemic and politics.

There’s this great line in the prologue of your book in which you write: “In reporting the book, I came to see the Cubs as a flesh and blood realization of the American dream.”

How so?

Thomas Fuller: So, these kids, their parents were from all over the globe. They all came together in an environment that allowed them to thrive, an environment that you couldn’t have in Tehran, that you couldn’t have in a lot of other countries.

But America gave them this school and America gave them the opportunity to play together and to win.

Stephanie Sy: In their season opener, the Cubs won 68-28.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Stephanie Sy in Riverside, California.