Introduction
What does it take to prove the world wrong?
The phrase carries weight when it comes from underdogs—students who’ve faced society’s low expectations, who’ve been underestimated simply because of who they are. In The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Thomas Fuller, acclaimed New York Times journalist Thomas Fuller captures the electrifying true story of the California School for the Deaf’s football team as they pursue their first-ever championship after decades of heartbreak.
Published in 2024 by Doubleday, Fuller’s book follows the 2021 season of the Cubs—a small eight-man football team of deaf high schoolers who refuse to accept defeat. This isn’t just a book review about sports or athletics. It’s a powerful narrative about belonging, resilience, and the unbreakable bonds of brotherhood forged through shared struggle.
The Story: Small Team, Massive Dreams
The Cubs had been losing for nearly seven decades. Since the California School for the Deaf, Riverside first fielded a football team in 1956, the program had endured fifty-one losing seasons against just nine winning ones. Not winning championships. Not nearly winning. Losing seasons, full stop. When Fuller first heard about an undefeated deaf high school team making it to the playoffs, he was a battle-hardened journalist covering natural disasters and political upheaval for the Times. Something about this small team in a modest school pulled him in unexpectedly—so much so that he stepped away from his prestigious San Francisco bureau chief position to follow the Cubs for an entire season.
What he found was far more than a feel-good sports story.
The team’s roster reads like an American tapestry. Their parents hailed from Mexico, El Salvador, Romania, Ethiopia—each player carrying their own story of hardship and hope. Take Phillip Castaneda, a lightning-fast running back whose love of football motivated him to wash his face in a Target bathroom every morning. He slept in his father’s car in the Target parking lot across from school. His determination was quiet but unyielding. Or consider Kaveh Angoorani, the defensive coordinator born in Iran, whose mother sent him to the United States hoping he’d thrive in the deaf community—and he did, so completely that his post-coaching retirement dream was to buy a Harley-Davidson and ride into the desert.
The book’s strength lies in how Fuller balances action with intimacy. He doesn’t just chronicle victories; he explores the psychology of winning, the frustration of being misunderstood, and the transformative power of having a place where you truly belong. Through his eyes, we meet Trevin Adams, the quarterback and son of head coach Keith Adams—a young man who doesn’t shy away from crushing tackles. We watch Felix Gonzales emerge as a multisport athlete so versatile that his position listing simply reads “athlete.” We see how deaf players communicate from across the field using American Sign Language, turning what hearing people might see as a limitation into a competitive advantage.
Fuller weaves in fascinating neuroscience: research showing that people deaf from birth have enhanced peripheral vision and react faster to movement. He explains how the Cubs benefit from immunity to crowd noise, a weapon that neutralizes what hearing teams use to disrupt opponents. But technology and biology alone don’t win championships. What wins championships is heart, discipline, and a brotherhood forged in fire.
The team’s journey unfolds like classic drama. There’s “Hell Week,” the brutal preseason conditioning where half the team throws up from exhaustion. There are lopsided victories and nail-biting close calls. There’s setback and loss, including Felix’s injury just as the team hits its championship stride. Through it all, the Cubs persevere—not because they’re the biggest or the strongest, but because they have something immeasurable: a shared sense of mission.
Why This Book Matters: More Than Just Football
This is a book for readers who care about belonging, identity, and what it means to break through barriers. If you’ve ever felt like an outsider or wondered what it would be like to find your tribe, this story will resonate deeply. Fuller doesn’t treat his deaf subjects as inspiration porn or as victims to be pitied. Instead, he grants them full humanity—their frustrations, their humor, their dreams, their complexity.
The book also serves as an intimate education in Deaf Culture (capitalized because it represents an entire way of life). Fuller introduces readers to the history of deaf schools in California, the evolution of American Sign Language as a linguistically complex and beautiful language, and the neuroscience proving that deafness isn’t a disability in the traditional sense—it’s a different way of experiencing the world. His interviews with linguists, neuroscientists, and deaf scholars ground the narrative in scholarship without ever feeling academic or preachy.
Fuller’s journalism shines through on every page. He captures the vulnerability of Keith Adams as both coach and father, watching his two sons play on the same team. He renders the grit of players who’ve experienced homelessness, poverty, and systemic barriers. He describes game action with novelistic precision—the sound of collision, the arc of a perfectly thrown pass, the exhale of relief after a crucial fourth-down stop. The pacing is breathless, much like the eight-man football the Cubs play.
This is a book for lifelong learners who want to understand culture outside their own experience. It’s for parents, coaches, and anyone invested in youth sports. It’s for readers seeking narratives about perseverance that don’t rely on cliché. And most importantly, it’s for anyone hungry for a story that restores faith in the possibility of triumph against the odds.
The Emotional Core
What makes The Boys of Riverside linger long after the final whistle is its emotional honesty. Fuller doesn’t just chronicle statistics; he explores what it means to be young, deaf, and determined in America. He writes about the particular loneliness of deaf children born to hearing parents who don’t know sign language. He captures the transcendent moment when a young Keith Adams first understood that his parents’ sign-language communication worked instantaneously, while spoken English had been a painful, glacial struggle.
The book also doesn’t shy away from the complexities of disability and identity. Some deaf activists argue that deafness shouldn’t be called a disability at all—because on a deaf campus, who is truly disabled? The person who knows American Sign Language and can communicate fluently with everyone around them? Or the person with perfect hearing who doesn’t know how to sign and is suddenly isolated? This philosophical reframing runs through Fuller’s narrative like a quiet undercurrent, challenging readers to rethink what we mean by limitation and capability.
Why You Should Read This Book
The Boys of Riverside works on multiple levels. On the surface, it’s a gripping sports narrative about an underdog team chasing a championship. At its heart, it’s an exploration of identity, belonging, and what happens when young people find a place where they’re not just accepted—they’re celebrated for exactly who they are. It’s about a community that had been told, explicitly and implicitly, that their deafness meant they couldn’t compete at the highest level. This book is the story of how they proved everyone wrong.
Fuller’s prose is warm without being saccharine, journalistic without being cold. You can almost feel the humidity of an August evening in Riverside, the weight of the pads on a teenager’s shoulders, the electric anticipation before a championship game. The book captures sensory details beautifully, making you understand how the Cubs “hear” the world through their eyes, their hands, their instincts.
For anyone seeking inspiration rooted in real people and real struggle rather than manufactured motivation, this is essential reading. It’s the kind of book that stays with you, reshaping how you think about diversity, resilience, and what true teamwork looks like.
Call to Action
If this story speaks to your curiosity about perseverance, identity, and the transformative power of sport, grab your copy of The Boys of Riverside by Thomas Fuller today. Whether you’re looking for your next great read or seeking a book that will genuinely move you, this one delivers on every page.
