A leader whose actions resonate
SILENCE. In the air was a symphony. Shoulder pads thumped and helmets cracked as Shawn McDonald and his teammates slammed into each other. But for Shawn, all was silence.
The quarterback tripped and tumbled. The fullback plowed into a defender and fell to his knees. The coaches slapped their thighs in frustration. Everything made noise, but Shawn could not hear a thing.
He was a lineman, a high school football player pounding and thudding through another hard practice. Shawn, 18, watched every mistake with dismay. He shared so much with his teammates. Their hopes, their fears. Not just about football, but about hardship. Nobody on the team could hear.
They were the Cubs. The Cubs of the California School for the Deaf, four miles south of downtown Riverside. The campus, classrooms and dorms were full of deaf kids. Teachers, coaches, administrators -- nearly all were deaf. Nobody talked much. There was no one to hear. The air was thick with muffled quiet.
But this was a proud bunch. When Shawn was a sophomore and a junior, the Cubs won 19 games and lost only three. Routinely, they beat nearly every football team in their league, a cluster of schools in the area, teams with good ears. The Cubs couldn’t hear a referee’s whistle, but last season they were league champions.
Now Shawn was a senior. In September, at the start of what figured to be his last year of football, the pressure had doubled. Shawn wasn’t a star. He was a good offensive blocker and a hard defensive tackler, simply a kid who loved to play football. Nevertheless, before the first practice, Coach Keith Adams had stood him in front of the team.
“We need players who can be examples for us, players who can help the coaches show the way, show us how to be Riverside Cub blood brothers,” the coach said in sign language, his fingers tracing through the air. “Now it is up to you guys to vote on our leaders for this season. Whoever wants Shawn to be one of our captains, raise your hand.”
Under his curly, brown hair, Shawn furrowed his brow. He grimaced. He stood on strong, bowed legs, but he shuffled his black Nike cleats in the dirt. This had been the coach’s idea, not his.
Every hand went up.
If only he were as sure of himself as they were of him. There had been times when he’d lost his temper, thrown his helmet, torn off his jersey, yelled in the guttural way he had of getting angry. He had a lot to learn. Leading was up to someone else. Besides, so much was uncertain. This year, half his championship teammates were gone.
Arrayed in front of him were only five seniors with muscled necks like his and expectations as high. There was one junior running back, who had been a star the year before. But most of the rest were freshmen and sophomores -- a ragtag bunch, some too light, others too heavy, some too knock-kneed, others too passive.
Several had never played organized sports. One was just over 5 feet tall. Another was so skinny his legs looked like bones and tendons under tightly stretched skin.
There were 22 players in all. Some opposing teams had twice that many.
It was hard enough being deaf. And now this.
The team picked four additional captains. Coach Adams asked the captains if they had anything to say.
Shawn did not trust himself. It was all he could do to sign: “Let’s go.”
Taunted, spit upon
Nothing had ever been easy for Shawn McDonald. When he was 6 months old, his family took him to a birthday party at his grandparents’. A kid behind him dropped a toy truck. It was metal, and it crashed on some concrete. Everyone winced but Shawn. In time, doctors delivered the news: Shawn was deaf.
His father, Ramon, believed it was his fault. His hearing was impaired. He had always blamed it on a cold he caught as an infant, but maybe it was hereditary. Shawn’s mother, Ana, could hear well. So could his sister, Gabi, three years older. So could his little brother. Ana McDonald resolved that Shawn would grow up no differently from a child who could hear.
The world, Shawn’s father and mother knew, was a hearing world, and Shawn would have to adapt. His parents didn’t learn much sign language. They insisted that Shawn read lips. He struggled to communicate, to make his feelings known. But in the small desert town of Hesperia, where they lived, 2 1/2 hours northeast of Los Angeles, he was an outcast.
Other children called him “retard.” They taunted him. They spit on him and hit him.
More than once, big sister Gabi stepped in and settled his scores for him with her fists. As his frame began to fill and he grew stronger, with thick hands and wide shoulders, he fought for himself. Gabi learned to sign and came up with ways to teach Shawn to form words.
She put his left hand on his throat and his right hand on hers, and she said one word and then another and let him feel the difference. “P, p, p, p,” she would say. “This is how a P feels, Shawn.” Then, “This is a new word: radiator. Say it when I do, Shawn. Radiator.” It was Gabi who called Shawn’s elementary school, quizzed his teachers and argued with the administration on his behalf.
Nonetheless, life among the hearing could be overwhelming. Shawn’s family owned a gas station. His mother ran the cash register, and his father was a mechanic. His mom sent Shawn out to check tires and wash windshields. He tried to talk, but his inability to hear words made it hard for him to speak.
“CaaahhhIIIIhuuuuppuuu?” he said, praying that the customers would understand: Can I help you?
Few did. Some laughed in his face and mimicked him. “CaaahhhIIIIhuuuuppuuu?”
When he was 12, he begged his parents to send him to a place with deaf people -- people like himself. That was how he came to board at the California School for the Deaf. At first, he felt lost, unsure how to act. He wore a bulky hearing aid and kept trying to talk. To many on campus, hearing aids and trying to talk meant being someone you weren’t.
So he threw away the hearing aid and spoke less often. He began learning a new way of signing: accompanying his gestures with what he called Bugs Bunny talk. Frustrated by the limits of their hand movements, his new deaf friends highlighted their feelings by contorting their faces and making exaggerated, mime-like motions with their bodies.
But he still felt out of step, as if he didn’t belong.
He expressed his pain by fighting. He defied his teachers and impressed everyone as a hard-headed kid who couldn’t handle his problems.
It was football that made a difference.
For the first time, he was part of something that felt good. He wasn’t fast, but he was strong, relentless -- someone the coaches could rely on.
He was surrounded by kids like him, who couldn’t hear the taunts from the other side of the line of scrimmage or the bellyaching from the stands -- “What! We’re losing to them, a bunch of deaf kids?” And when the Cubs won their league, it cooled Shawn’s frustration. It seemed to show that the deaf could do just about anything.
This year, though, was different: The Cubs lost the first two games of the season. They didn’t just lose; they were crushed. Now, even in practice, Shawn could see how bad things were. And this year he was a captain. When the quarterback tripped, Shawn flinched. When the fullback got flattened, Shawn’s eyes narrowed.
He watched as running backs and linebackers ran the wrong way, as his teammates joked and teased and paid no attention to the coaches.
If he was going to be a captain, he had to lead.
“Look, guys,” he signed, as the Cubs straggled to the sidelines. “We’ve lost two games so far, lost them bad. But are you gonna quit? Are you gonna roll over?” His right hand passed over his left. It circled and looped. His brown eyes widened. “We’ve got to turn this around. We have to show those hearing teams. They think we are nothing!”
In his fervor, he broke the social taboo. As he signed, he spilled half-formed words from his mouth, at first too softly, then too loudly. “Look, I know you are deaf. We all are. But that just means we have to show them what we can do.
“The deaf don’t just roll over.”
Field of frustrations
Sept. 15. Game Three
Opponent: Silver Valley High School of Yermo, near Barstow
Shawn glanced at AnaRosa, his girlfriend, one of the Cubs cheerleaders. The Cubs had no band. Melodies were meaningless to the deaf. AnaRosa and the others danced with an unsteady rhythm. In the bleachers were only a dozen fans, including Shawn’s parents and Gabi. Most other parents lived too far away. The fans sat quietly. Cheering was pointless.
Because they were so few, most Cubs played both offense and defense. By the second quarter, they had started to tire. In the huddle, the quarterback flashed his fingers to call a play. Shawn, always eager, bolted out first, his shoulders wide. He carried 190 pounds on his 5-foot, 10-inch frame. Most of it was muscle. He and the other linemen crouched low. They turned their heads to watch the ball, because nobody called signals.
The quarterback adjusted his players’ positions by clapping, stomping and pointing. Otherwise, the Cubs were silent. Silver Valley players shouted: “It’s a run!” “They’re gonna run!” “Watch 29! Watch 29!”
To signal he was ready, the Cubs quarterback slapped the center’s butt. The center snapped the ball.
Shawn catapulted into a Silver Valley lineman and drove him back. A Cubs running back took the ball and dashed forward. He didn’t see and couldn’t hear the Silver Valley defender coming, so he did not make the adjustments necessary to take the blow. He didn’t shift his shoulders, didn’t relax his muscles.
The defender hit him like a car ramming a wall.
The Cub’s head flew back. His arms and legs helicoptered. He went down in a heap.
“Aggghhhh! Got ‘im! Got ‘im!” the defender roared. “Don’t come in here with that!” The Cubs just stared. They couldn’t hear him.
Another play. Now Silver Valley was holding. When Cubs coaches tried to complain, they had to use an interpreter. Yet another play. The referees blew their whistles, but the Cubs kept on blocking and running. The referees didn’t know how to sign. They waved their arms, but nobody noticed.
Cubs coaches wanted a timeout. One of them waved, then stomped, then tried to shout. “Tieowwww! Tieowwww!” Timeout. Timeout.
No one paid attention.
Slowly, the Cubs lost their nerve. Running backs headed the wrong way. The quarterback fumbled. Players and coaches bickered.
Final score: Silver Valley, 27. Cubs, 0.
In the locker room, a tall player from last year’s Cubs walked up. He laughed at Shawn then pointed at a framed, glass-covered photo near the door. It showed the Cubs two years before. Red numbers spelled out their record: 9-2.
“My teams were better than yours,” the player signed, smirking. “You guys suck.”
Shawn responded by signing an obscenity. His lips formed the angry words. “I was on those teams too!” Shawn took off a shoe and hurled it. The shoe slammed into the photo and sent it crashing to the floor.
Agonizingly close
Oct. 13. Game Six
Opponent: Twin Pines High School near Banning
By now, the Cubs were 0-5. Opponents had scored 191 points against them. The Cubs hadn’t scored at all. They were arguably the worst high school football team in California. Their star player had quit. So had two others, both seniors. The star was gone, but the other two had had a change of heart, and Shawn had helped talk his angry teammates into taking them back.
In this game against Twin Pines, a juvenile detention center, the Cubs faced kids convicted of serious crimes. It was intimidating. Some Cubs imagined that every player on the Twin Pines team had tattoos and was a member of a gang.
Maybe it was nerves. Maybe the moon was right. From the start, each time Twin Pines carried the ball, Shawn and his defense stopped them.
A Cubs running back, one of the freshmen, took the ball, juked left then ran 50 yards into the Twin Pines end zone. It was the first Cubs touchdown of the year. Then it happened again. This time it was the Cubs quarterback. And suddenly the score was 14-0.
Then the Cubs running back bent low and charged across the goal line once more. Score: 21-0.
The Cubs were beside themselves. “We’ve got 21,” they signed at halftime. “They’ve got zero.” “Twenty-one points to zero.” One by one, Shawn shook every player’s hand. “Congratulations.... That’s good football.... Keep going.”
For another quarter, the Cubs held Twin Pines scoreless. Then, with less than four minutes left in the game, Twin Pines scored a touchdown. Shawn wasn’t worried. The Cubs still led by 14 points. But then Twin Pines intercepted a pass and ran the ball in for a second touchdown.
This can’t be happening, Shawn would remember telling himself.
Twin Pines scored again -- its third touchdown in three minutes. Score: 21-20.
Twin Pines set up to kick the extra point.
A Cubs freshman blocked it.
One minute left.
All the Cubs had to do was catch the kickoff and tie up the ball. Shawn prayed it would come to him. He would catch it and fall to the ground. The game would be over.
But the ball tumbled end over end to another Cub and caromed through his hands.
Twin Pines fell on it.
The Cubs coaches cursed. They stalked the sideline. Shawn was bone weary, but he couldn’t let it show -- not for his team. We can’t lose, he told himself.
Twin Pines lined up within spitting distance of the Cubs end zone. The Cubs hunkered down. The Twin Pines center snapped the ball.
Shawn bulled forward, so tired he could hardly move.
The Twin Pines quarterback took the ball, stepped back, planted his feet and threw. The ball hung in the air, then dropped into a smooth, parabolic arc, right to a receiver.
Shawn was certain that all was lost.
But then the ball wobbled. It bounced off the receiver’s hands and fell to the ground.
The Cubs had won. They were stunned.
Shawn and his teammates sprinted toward each other, high-stepping, hugging, slapping shoulders, helmets and backs. “We won, we won, we won, we won!” they signed. “We won, we won, we won.”
Taken to the ER
Oct. 21. Game Seven
Opponent: California School for the Deaf, Fremont
In English, one of Shawn’s hardest classes (it was almost a foreign language), he had drawn a poster and taped it to the wall. It was a drawing of a football field and a player. He had written his name on it and the words “Football is my life.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t. No victory on the field, no matter how sweet, could give Shawn everything he needed for life. Beyond the cyclone fence wrapped around his campus stood the hearing world. He would graduate in June. He didn’t have a driver’s license; the test scared him. He hadn’t applied to college; that scared him too.
Could he get a job? Could he ever buy a house? Support a wife?
“These boys, they are not going to have an easy time,” signed John Castrese, a Cubs coach, at lunch one day. “Some of them might never work.... The others, they will probably end up in blue-collar jobs, and then they will face more and more obstacles taking care of themselves: co-workers not willing to help them, employers who will fire them because they say they can’t have a deaf person working there. They will face trying times that are tougher than anything on the football field.”
Even this year, at 1-5?
“Maybe,” Castrese said, picking at his food, “they can learn from this.”
Learn? There was, indeed, one thing Shawn was learning: how to be a leader. Coming up was a non-league game. It was against the Cubs’ chief rival: the California School for the Deaf in the Bay Area city of Fremont. Riverside and Fremont, both run by the state, played every year. The winner took home a 4-foot trophy. More important, the winner took home bragging rights.
Beating Fremont, Shawn said, “would save the season.”
He worked hard to prepare his team. He took a freshman lineman off the practice field and showed him how to move his feet. He told a quarterback who almost never got to play: Be ready! The quarterback thanked him and called him “the father of football.”
Shawn would not stand for discouragement. He mimed what defeatism would do to the team: He drew his right hand to his neck, formed an imaginary noose, yanked it, then jerked his head to one side and opened his mouth, as if he were dead.
The game was in Riverside. The night before, the Cubs celebrated homecoming. In the gym, hip-hop music pumped through speakers so loudly that every beat threatened to bend the floor. Balloons hung from the ceiling. Dancers took them down and held them close so they could feel every rattle and thump. The Fremont players were already in town. A knot of them walked in. They had a cocky step. They wore their caps backward. Their jeans were slung low.
“Bunch of dorks,” Shawn signed, sneering. “Who do they think they are, coming here like this? Look at the way they walk. I can’t wait to beat them!”
The next night, for the first time all year, the bleachers were packed. Still, the stands were mostly quiet.
“Tonight, no mercy,” one coach signed, as the Cubs gathered in a circle. His hands formed sharp patterns in the air. “No mercy, no mercy....”
In the first dozen plays, though, the Cubs’ momentum melted. The Fremont players were bigger, and there were many more of them. They ran the ball into the Cubs end zone once, twice, three times.
At halftime, Shawn sat with his arms crossed, lips closed. Nothing had worked, no matter how much he had willed it.
“You have to block more to the right,” one coach signed. “Move more to the right.”
“No,” another signed back. “They don’t expect plays down the middle. Go down the middle.”
Shawn unfolded himself and rose to his feet. His face was cramped with anger.
“We can catch these guys,” he signed, furiously. “We need spirit.... Come on, this is Fremont, guys. We can catch up. Don’t give up, because we can do it, I am telling you. What the hell are we doing out here if we are not going to play to win?”
Back on the field, the Cubs stopped Fremont cold. Then the Cubs blocked a kick. Shawn watched with a grin as a wiry senior picked up the ball, cradled it in his right arm and raced into the Fremont end zone. The Cubs were on the scoreboard.
Just as quickly, though, they lost their drive.
Shawn knew that if Fremont scored again, the game would be out of reach. He was desperate. He dived to stop a running back and fell face-first into a pileup. A Fremont player ran in from behind, and his helmet smacked Shawn’s loud and hard. Shawn stood. His legs shook. All he could see was darkness.
In the bleachers, Gabi knew something was wrong. She ran down to the field, threaded her way through the players and stood behind him.
He tried to ignore her.
“Shawn, what team are you playing?” a trainer signed.
Shawn tried to spell Fremont with his fingers: F-R-F-R-F-R....
“Shawn, what day is today?”
“I can’t remember.”
“What is your name?”
No response.
Gabi handed him a cup of water. The trainer told him to sit down.
But Shawn looked at the field, saw the game going on without him and slammed the water to the ground.
“No!” he signed. “I need to play. I can’t leave my team out there....”
He brushed past his sister, the trainer and his coaches. He limped back onto the field. But it was too late. The referees blew their whistles -- and held up their hands for those who couldn’t hear. The game was over.
Final score: Fremont, 32; the Cubs, 6.
At midfield, Shawn slumped to his knees. Gabi ran out. She helped him up, and they walked together, his arms around her shoulders, to the locker room. He could not remember much about the game. The trainer gave him Advil and told him to go home.
But Shawn’s parents decided to take him to an emergency room.
In their minivan, he clutched his mother’s hand. His pupils were wide. He began to speak and sign as if he were a child. Only Gabi understood: All Shawn could see was his past -- moment after terrible moment from his childhood.
“Remember the time when I got beat up? Remember that mean boy? Remember what that girl said to me? Remember the gas station? Remember what that lady did? ... Gabi? ... Remember?”
Tears rolled down his face.
A profound lesson
Doctors diagnosed a concussion and said no football for three weeks.
During the first week, Shawn stood on the sidelines and watched his team practice. He was proud, especially of the freshmen. He could see them getting better. The quarterback was starting to hit his targets. The linebackers were making their tackles.
But by the second week, he could not stand it. “Mom, I’ve made up my mind,” he said. “I feel fine. I’m 18 and can make my own decisions now. I’m going to play.”
She protested.
“Mom, it’s important. I’m not sure we can win any more games, but I don’t want to quit. I have to show my team to never quit.”
That Saturday, he suited up, and the Cubs played hard. Sometimes they seemed like the better team, but they lost.
The next morning, home for the weekend, Shawn sanded and primed the chassis of a 1956 Studebaker. In an auto parts store that afternoon, he told his father he had been studying for his driver’s test and thought he could pass it.
He said he wanted to go to a community college that taught the deaf how to work on cars. He wanted to be a mechanic, just like his dad.
One more game. The Cubs fell behind early. With three minutes left, Shawn dived for the ball and felt his shoulder pop. His right arm dangled. He could not raise it. A trainer sent him to the bench. But one play later, he cradled his right arm in his left hand, stood up and lumbered back out onto the field.
He blocked an offensive lineman, freed himself and tried to catch the runner.
With the sound of referee whistles he couldn’t hear, the last game of Shawn’s final high school season ended.
The Cubs had lost 48 to 7.
For the first time, Shawn accepted it. The Cubs were 1-9 for the season. But there was more to life than football.
As his teammates sat in a circle near their end zone, the captains spoke. Shawn was last. He stepped forward, his helmet off, his hair wet and matted, his shoulder throbbing. His big hands began to move, and he lifted his head. One by one, he looked into the eyes of every Cub on the team.
“I learned this year, no matter what happens, everything is about heart,” he signed. “Your heart is strength, the same for the freshmen and for the rest of us.... Always, always show how much heart you have -- in life and in football....”
Slowly, he pointed to his chest. “It’s all right here.”
*
About this story
Kurt Streeter and photographer Robert Gauthier spent football season with the Cubs of the California School for the Deaf, Riverside. They interviewed players, parents and teachers, along with experts in deaf culture and education. They communicated with Shawn McDonald and others who are hearing impaired by asking questions on paper and through interpreters who are expert in American Sign Language.
To view a gallery of photos from the Cubs’ past season, see
latimes.com/deaffootball.
