California
Deaf Football Team Was Underestimated and Mocked — Until They Started 'Beating the Pants Off' Opponents (Exclusive)
![Deaf Football Team Was Underestimated and Mocked — Until They Started 'Beating the Pants Off' Opponents (Exclusive) Deaf Football Team Was Underestimated and Mocked — Until They Started 'Beating the Pants Off' Opponents (Exclusive)](https://people.com/thmb/tkZWQXQ5FzCW6wIbtyPNc2vFcfg=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(722x576:724x578)/California-School-for-the-Deaf-tout-082124-088a765b74f04f88ade0b56e823681ac.jpg)
With minutes left before halftime in the California School for the Deaf in Riverside’s 2022 championship football game, Coach Keith Adams and his players had come from behind to gain a narrow lead — and pushed for more.
Quarterback Trevin Adams, the coach’s oldest son, threw a desperate pass downfield — and right into the arms of wide receiver Jory Valencia, his childhood best friend, who broke for the end zone.
Starting with that touchdown dash, the Cubs, having honed their chemistry and system of football-specific sign language over countless hours, began steamrolling their way into history as the first deaf football team in the state to be crowned champions.
“We showed that we’re not only equal to others,” Trevin, 19, says now of their 80-26 win. “We’re better.”
For more on the Cubs championship football team, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now, or subscribe.
Scarlett Valencia
After that first championship in their division, the Cubs, who play a mix of hearing and deaf teams, won a second in 2023 and have no intention of slowing down in the new season, which starts on Friday, Aug. 30.
“We’re here to keep that streak going, to honor that legacy,” says 17-year-old Kaden Adams, who stepped into the role of first-string quarterback since brother Trevin graduated.
Their wins turned the boys into community heroes — at one point, thousands packed the stands — and attracted a national spotlight. New York Times correspondent Thomas Fuller was so inspired, he gave up his job to document the Cubs’ rise in a new book, The Boys of Riverside, out now.
“It was so quintessentially American,” says Fuller, 54, of being struck by the team’s perseverance. “A team that had endured seven decades of losing seasons was now beating the pants off of all their opponents.”
It wasn’t always so. The school’s football program began in the 1950s but for decades was plagued by seasons of defeat — 51 in all. In nearly a dozen of those, the team did not win a game at all.
The losses were made more difficult by the discrimination athletes at the school sometimes faced from outsiders. (The Cubs were even mockingly accused of faking their deafness.)
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But the players say they shrugged off the ignorance. “Just because we can’t hear, it doesn’t mean anything,” Trevin says. “We’ll still crush you.”
Their turnaround began in summer of 2021, when the boys returned to school restless and seeking ways to reconnect with one another after the isolation of online classes and pandemic protocols.
“COVID made us realize what we were losing out on, and football is a good representation of what brings us together,” says Valencia, 19, a basketball-turned-football player who discovered that he excelled in catching high passes.
Riverside’s deaf community is tightly knit, and many of the Cubs players had grown up together. Coach Adams (who, like the other coaches, is also deaf) credits that bond for their success, along with rigorous training, a fleet-footed playing style and the unique ways in which their deafness makes them stronger.
Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times via Getty
“When you watch deaf players and coaches communicate with each other on the football field, you realize maybe hearing people have a disadvantage,” explains Fuller, describing the speed with which they trade thoughts via sign language. “They are not affected by noise, they can speak over distances. It’s fast; it’s efficient.”
The Cubs’ first big win was in late September 2021, when the Division II squad beat Division I Calvary Chapel in a nail-biting 66-57 win that proved their preparation was paying off. “That started waking people up,” Valencia, the wide receiver, says. “It was a shock for us too.”
As the Cubs notched more and more victories, their excitement and determination grew.
“Hearing people, they’ve had opportunities in the past. They’ll have opportunities in the future to get a championship. But for us, the future’s uncertain,” says Coach Adams. “These boys were eager to change hearing people’s perspectives and get the opportunity they deserve.”
In their first-ever championship game, in 2021, with more than 3,000 fans in attendance, the Cubs’ undefeated season ended with a 74-22 loss — and a tough lesson that sometimes the best things in life don’t come easy.
“That really showed us what we needed to improve on,” says offensive lineman Christian Jimenez, 18, a cocaptain who transferred to the school to connect with teammates on an all-deaf team.
Adds their coach: “After that first loss, they were thinking, ‘Not again. I’m not gonna lose again.’ ”
They hardly did. The summer of 2022 was spent in the weight room, and in the two seasons since, the Cubs lost just three times. With each victory, often by double-digit margins, they attracted more fans and earned the respect they knew they long deserved.
“That stoked a fire in others to finally take us seriously and become more motivated [to try to] beat Riverside,” says Trevin, then the team’s cocaptain and star player, who inherited his love of football from his dad.
Scarlett Valencia
The 2022 championship win — which capped an undefeated season — was not without hurdles. Receiver Felix Gonzales was sidelined with a shattered shinbone mid-season, Valencia played through severe pneumonia (“It was my last year; I didn’t want to miss out,” he says), and Jimenez competed in his final game with a brace, warned by doctors that a single hit to his broken leg could leave him unable to walk.
“I still had that hunger and that drive. I wanted to feel that for one last time,” he says. “I gave my heart. I gave my all to it, for the Cubs.”
A successive championship win in 2023 hasn’t slaked their thirst for a threepeat this fall. “It would be amazing,” says Coach Adams. “That’s very rare, even for a hearing team.”
While some of his star players have since moved on to college — Trevin, Jimenez and Valencia are now student athletes at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., following in their coach’s footsteps — Kaden and other Cubs seniors are looking forward to passing along their winning spirit to new teammates this season.
“I can already tell we have earned other teams’ respect, and they do see us as equals,” Kaden says. “I think we’re going to have a good year.”
![](https://newspub.live/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/np-logo.png)
California
Editorial: California Medi-Cal measure locks in special-interest funding
![Editorial: California Medi-Cal measure locks in special-interest funding Editorial: California Medi-Cal measure locks in special-interest funding](https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/STC-L-JYCRIME-0930-05_100838132.jpg?w=1024&h=604)
Proposition 35, the Medi-Cal funding measure on the Nov. 5 ballot, presents another example of special-interest ballot-box budgeting that limits the discretion of lawmakers and reduces flexibility to respond to fiscal crises. Voters should reject it.
If we’ve learned anything in the past few years, it’s that multibillion budget surpluses one year can morph into gigantic deficits the next. The governor and state lawmakers need flexibility to responsibly address the shortfalls.
California voters should not lock in funding allocations that favor doctors and hospitals over children and community health workers. Nor should they keep tying the hands of lawmakers, who must already contend with, for example, voter mandates for school funding, which must receive about 40% of the state budget; for prudent budget reserves; and for arts education.
At issue with Proposition 35 is a tax on health plans that provides $7.5 billion of the $161 billion needed to annually fund Medi-Cal — the federal-state health program for low-income people.
The tax is based on the number of people to whom the health plans provide coverage. The state leverages the tax money for matching funds from the federal government.
Medi-Cal, in turn, reimburses the health plans for almost all the tax, with the federal government covering the majority of the cost. In other words, it’s a tax that’s not really a tax but rather a way to pull in more federal money.
Proposition 35 is being sold as a measure that would secure that $7.5 billion in funding by permanently extending the tax on health plans. But this lock-in isn’t needed. State lawmakers, understanding how the tax leverages federal dollars, have generally levied and renewed it for nearly two decades and are incentivized to do so in the future.
Meanwhile, Proposition 35 would not only make the tax permanent, it would also dictate allocation of the spoils. It would pick winners and losers.
Not surprisingly, the winners include doctors, hospitals and emergency ambulance providers, which explains why they are major financial backers of the measure. Their funding would be protected and, in some cases, increased under Proposition 35.
Among the possible losers are community health workers, private nurses and children under age 5, who are currently protected from losing their Medi-Cal coverage.
To provide the additional funding for the winners under Proposition 35 and still preserve other Medi-Cal programs, the state would need to tap the general fund for another $1 billion to $2 billion annually in 2025 and 2026, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
The current tax will expire at the end of 2026 unless the Legislature and the federal government extend it. But there’s every reason to believe state lawmakers will do their part, just as they have in the past.
Yet, Proposition 35 backers tout that their measure would make the tax permanent starting in 2027 — and use the notion of going after politically unpopular insurance companies for money as a selling point even though those companies will get their money back.
Backers of the ballot measure also say that the tax revenue has been diverted to bolster the state’s general fund. But the state this fiscal year will provide $62.4 billion to help fund Medi-Cal, including $35 billion from the general fund.
It’s fiscally reckless to keep using ballot measures to earmark unpredictable state revenues. Proposition 35, which is 43 pages long, “hamstrings our ability to have the kind of flexibility that’s required at the moment we’re living in,” says Gov. Gavin Newsom.
He’s right.
More funding for health care for the poor is a laudable goal. So are attempts to raise rates for doctors and other health care providers who serve Medi-Cal patients. Indeed, there are legitimate concerns about Medi-Cal patients not being able to find providers because doctors don’t want to take them on at low payment rates.
But the allocation of limited general fund money should be made when all the competing demands are weighed by state lawmakers. We shouldn’t be locking it in with a ballot measure few voters will ever understand.
California
Teaching assistant arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting students at California School for the Deaf
![Teaching assistant arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting students at California School for the Deaf Teaching assistant arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting students at California School for the Deaf](https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/thinkstockphotos-484438808.jpg?w=810&h=540)
FREMONT — A teaching assistant at the California School for the Deaf was arrested Thursday on suspicion of sexually assaulting multiple students, according to authorities.
Detectives opened an investigation after the students came forward to report the assaults, the Fremont Police Department said in a news release.
The suspect — identified as Brandon Duran, 25, of Fremont — was linked to “at least three separate incidents,” according to police.
The assaults happened on July 4 and July 19 in Fremont and Livermore, police said.
Duran was booked into Santa Rita Jail on charges of annoying or molesting a child, oral copulation with a minor, oral copulation with a victim too intoxicated to resist, contacting a minor with the intent to commit a sexual offense and unlawful sexual penetration, according to police.
Detectives are looking for other victims, police said.
Anyone with information related to the case can contact Detective Ana Santana at 510-513-1091.
Check back for updates.
California
Bay Area Crime: Explore 20 years of data from California cities
![Bay Area Crime: Explore 20 years of data from California cities Bay Area Crime: Explore 20 years of data from California cities](https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Bay-Area-Counties-Crime.png?w=1024&h=534)
The California Department of Justice (DOJ) releases its latest crime data every year at the beginning of July. The Criminal Justice Statistics Center collects, analyzes, and reports statistical data that provide valid measures of crime and the criminal justice process. It examines these data continuously to describe crime and the criminal justice system better and promote the responsible presentation and use of crime statistics.
According to the latest 2023 California Department of Justice data, most counties in the Bay Area had a decrease in crimes in 2023, including violent and property crimes. However, Alameda County still had an increase, especially a sharp rise in violent crimes.
Several cities in the Bay Area have shown high crime rates over the years. Read here to learn more about which city has the highest crime rates in the Bay Area, and why.
The California Department of Justice is completing a five-year effort to develop and implement a new state crime data repository, the California Incident-Based Reporting System (CIBRS), to house the new FBI statistical reporting format. Previously, California used the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Not all law enforcement agencies in the state have yet made the transition.
According to the DOJ’s annual crime report, not all agencies were able to submit a full year of crime data for 2023. Find your city or county on these three interactive charts to discover your city’s trends and quirks and compare them with other cities from 2013 to 2023.
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