With minutes remaining before halftime at the California School for the Deaf in the Riverside 2022 championship football game, coach Keith Adams and his players had taken a narrow lead — and pushed for more.
Quarterback Trevin Adams, the coach’s oldest son, threw a desperation pass down the field — and right into the hands of wide receiver Jory Valencia, his childhood best friend, who made his way into the end zone.
Starting with that breakout run, the Cubs, after honing their chemistry and football-specific sign language system over countless hours, made history as the nation’s first deaf football team to become a champion.
“We showed we’re not just equal to the others,” Trevin, 19, says now of their 80-26 victory. “We’re better off.”
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Cubs shortstop Kaden Adams (center) in a game against the Indiana School for the Deaf in September 2022.
Scarlett Valencia
After that first division championship, the Cubs, who field a mix of hearing and deaf teams, won their second in 2023 and have no intention of slowing down in the new season, which begins Friday, Aug. 30.
“We’re here to continue that streak, to honor that legacy,” said 17-year-old Kaden Adams, who has stepped into the starting quarterback role since brother Trevin graduated.
Their victories turned the boys into community heroes – at one point thousands packed the stands – and attracted national attention. The New York Times correspondent Thomas Fuller was so inspired that he quit his job to document the Cubs’ rise in a new book, The Riverside Boysout now.
“It was so quintessentially American,” says Fuller, 54, of his admiration for the team’s perseverance. “A team that had endured seven decades of losing seasons was now beating all of its opponents.”
It wasn’t always like that. The school’s football program began in the 1950s, but for decades it was followed by losing seasons – 51 in all. In nearly a dozen such games, the team did not win at all.
The losses were made even worse by the discrimination the athletes at school sometimes faced from foreigners. (The Cubs were even mockingly accused of faking their deafness.)
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But the players say they shrugged their shoulders at ignorance. “Just because we don’t hear it doesn’t mean anything,” says Trevin. “We’ll crush you, though.”
Their turnaround began in the summer of 2021, when the boys returned to school restless and looking for ways to reconnect with each other after the isolation of online classes and pandemic protocols.
“Covid made us realize what we’re missing out on, and soccer is a good representation of what unites us,” says Valencia, 19, a basketball-turned-soccer player who discovered he’s great at catching high passes.
The deaf community in Riverside is tight-knit, and many Cubs players grew up together. Coach Adams (who, like the other coaches, is also deaf) credits them for their success, along with rigorous practices, a fast-paced style of play and the unique ways deafness makes them stronger.
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Cubs head coach Keith Adams (right) interacts with his players during a September 2022 game.
Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times via Getty
“When you watch deaf players and coaches communicate with each other on the football field, you realize that maybe hearing people are at a disadvantage,” Fuller explains, describing the speed with which they exchange thoughts through sign language. “They are not affected by noise, they can speak at a distance. It’s fast; it’s effective.”
The Cubs’ first big win came in late September 2021, when the Division II team beat Division I Calvary Chapel in an incredible 66-57 victory that proved their preparation had paid off. “It started to wake people up,” says Valencia, a wide receiver. “It was a shock for us too.”
As the Cubs racked up more wins, their excitement and determination grew.
“Hearing people, they’ve had opportunities in the past. They will have a chance to win a championship in the future. But for us, the future is uncertain,” says coach Adams. “These boys were eager to change the perspectives of hearing people and get the opportunity they deserved.”
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 hard lesson that sometimes the best things in life don’t come easy.
“It really showed us what we needed to improve on,” says forward Christian Jimenez, 18, a co-captain who transferred to the school to connect with teammates on the team who are completely deaf.
Their coach adds: “After that first loss, they thought, ‘Not again. I won’t lose again.’ ”
They hardly did. They spent the summer of 2022 in the gym, and in the two seasons since then, the Cubs have lost just three times. With each win, often by double digits, they attracted more fans and earned the respect they knew they deserved long ago.
“It ignited others to finally take us seriously and become more motivated [to try to] beat Riverside,” says Trevin, then co-captain and star of the team, who inherited his father’s love of soccer.
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Cubs shortstop Joseph Barrios throws a ball during their 2023 championship game.
Scarlett Valencia
The 2022 championship win — which capped off an undefeated season — did not come without obstacles. Receiver Felix Gonzales was sidelined with a broken lower leg midseason, Valencia played through severe pneumonia (“It was my last year; I didn’t want to miss it,” he says), and Jimenez competed in his final game with a brace, doctors warned that one blow to his broken leg could render him unable to walk.
“I still had that hunger and that desire. I wanted to feel it one last time,” he says. “I gave my heart. I did my best, for the Cubs.”
Back-to-back championship wins in 2023 haven’t quenched their thirst for a treble this fall. “It would be amazing,” says Coach Adams. “That’s very rare, even for a hearing team.”
While some of his stars have since gone off 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 the rest of the Cubs’ senior players can’t wait to pass on their winning spirit to their new teammates this season. .
“I can already tell that we have earned the respect of the other teams and they see us as their equal,” says Kaden. “I think we’re going to have a good year.”
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education