I had purchased this book for a gift for my younger sister, who was a deaf ed instructor and interpreter for many years. She lent it back to me, and gave it a massive thumbs up, and I immediately saw why once I started reading it. It covers two seasons of football for the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, California (CSDR). Spoiler alert, they came up second best the first year and won the state championship the second. It was written by a NY Times bureau chief, located in San Francisco, who was prompted by his boss to go down to Riverside and check out this deaf high school team. He was so fascinated by what he saw that he took a leave of absence to follow the team for two seasons.
First of all, (and I’m a California native but I had no idea that this existed) there is such a thing as eight man football. There are hundreds of small high schools in California in more remote locations that can’t field the typical large squads, so they have a league of their own. The rules are slightly different (such as an 80 yard field rather than 100) but it turns out to be a different game. No fancy plays, basically the same group of kids running all the plays. One such school was Avalon High, on Catalina Island. Their coach confessed to a unique home field advantage (first of all, many players don’t take to the hour long crossing from the mainland that well, plus many others are stunned and distracted by the idea that they are on an island!)
There is also an excellent writeup on the history of deaf education and the evolution of ASL. The original California School for the Deaf was located in Berkley, and CSDR was founded to cover the southern half of the state. Many of the students board at the school, and it serves all grades.
And then there are the kids. The kid who was living in his car with his dad and his dad’s girlfriend in the Target parking lot so he could attend this school. The kids from well-off families who transferred here because they were tired of being That Kid (the only deaf kid in the school) and could find community here. Kids from a wide diversity of ethnic and economic backgrounds who had found companionship. So much more than just football.
Highly recommended.
