How California School of the Deaf, Riverside became a football dynasty

Thomas Fuller remembers being intrigued by an email from the California Department of Education announcing that the football team for California School of the Deaf, Riverside would be heading to the playoffs.

After an undefeated season.

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In fact, the reporter, then San Francisco Bureau Chief for the New York Times, was so intrigued that he hit the road for a seven-hour trek from the Bay Area to the Inland Empire.

“It was really breathless. I showed up just a couple hours before the game started and met with some of the players,” Fuller recalls. “They must have thought that I was a little bonkers, because I just walked into the room where they were hanging out before the game and I said, ‘I love this story.’”

Throughout his career, Fuller has been more likely to cover political turmoil and natural disasters than sports. But he does like football.

“I’m a lifelong fan of the New York Jets, so I know something about being an underdog,” he says.

And he knows a good story: The Cubs of California School of the Deaf, Riverside had one.

In fact, Fuller’s article about that 2021 game went viral. Television stations picked up on the story. Gov. Newsom included a budget proposal to build the school a new stadium. Disney came calling to bring the story to the screen.

“Then I felt a responsibility because I was seeing the coverage, which I wasn’t sure I really liked,” says Fuller. “I also didn’t know how they would be portrayed in a movie.”

So the reporter, who spent most of his career covering international stories, embedded himself with the team and began work on a book. “The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory” arrived in stores on August 6.

Fuller followed the team throughout its championship-winning 2022 season. (The team repeated the feat in 2023, beating Canoga Park’s Faith Baptist in the CIF championship for their division for the second year in a row.)

But football is only part of the story Fuller tells. Really, “Boys of Riverside” is a book about deaf community and culture, as well as about language and communication.

“I was very much new to the deaf world, to deaf culture,” says Fuller. “It’s not something that I have in my family. It’s not something that I had been immersed in before doing this.”

That Fuller was an outsider at the school helped him understand one of the book’s central questions about deafness. As he says, “Is it a handicap or is it just a language barrier?”

Fuller has a knack for languages. He also speaks French and Thai and has picked up other languages while working as a foreign correspondent. While he did start to learn American Sign Language in the course of his reporting, he relied on an interpreter, Melika Angoorani, throughout the project.

“I quickly understood that, if I wanted to do this with the utmost accuracy, I was going to need to see this world through the lens of experts and expert interpreters,” he explains, “because I couldn’t afford to have any misinterpretation of what I was seeing.”

Fuller hung around so many practices that he would joke about the two-tone tan he developed. “My face was tan on one side of my head because I stood on the sidelines of the practices every day with the setting sun to my left,” he says. He also attended the team’s meetings and nearly all of the games. He spent hours interviewing every player on the team. During his stay in Riverside, Fuller lived with deaf roommates.

Come game time, he would watch on the side of the opposing team. “I wanted to talk to them,” he says. “I would get their impressions of the game, but I wanted to hear them and how they were reacting to the deaf team.”

“When it came to be game time, I had to be very poker-faced,” says Fuller. “But inside of me, there was no way to not want to cheer for the Cubs.”

Reading “The Boys of Riverside,” you might find yourself cheering not just for the Cubs, but for the whole community surrounding California School of the Deaf, Riverside.

“The most rewarding thing about working at CSDR is being able to communicate effectively with every student and staff here, and seeing the students blossom over the years with intelligible conversations and speeches, after they first enrolled with minimal or no language,” says Erika Thompson, the school’s outreach specialist, in an email interview.

And through its football program, the school’s name is reaching more people.

“We are the first deaf high school to win two straight playoff sections in national. Our deaf community really supports our football and many deaf people show up for the game,” says Coach Keith Adams in an email interview.

Referring to the team’s story and how it affects people, Adams adds: “I am sure it inspires them because all of us face our own challenges so they can see someone who overcomes difficulties can help their hopes and motivation to keep striving towards their own goals.”

Originally Published: August 6, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.