In the chap­ter “Play­ing a Deaf Leg­end,” the nar­ra­tive revolves around an upcom­ing game between the Cubs and the Indi­ana School for the Deaf, led by Coach Michael Paulone. At six­ty-five years old, Paulone is a vet­er­an coach respect­ed with­in the deaf com­mu­ni­ty, guid­ing his team to a 4–0 record despite only hav­ing fifty boys in the high school. The chal­lenge lies in the tran­si­tion from eleven-man foot­ball to the faster-paced eight-man game played by River­side.

Paulone’s jour­ney is inspi­ra­tional; he was deaf from birth yet excelled as a quar­ter­back in his youth in Philadel­phia. His expe­ri­ence cul­mi­nat­ed in the Philadel­phia City All-Star Foot­ball Game, where he faced skep­ti­cism about his abil­i­ties due to his deaf­ness. Paulone worked around this by employ­ing his coach from the Penn­syl­va­nia School for the Deaf to relay plays through sign lan­guage. This inge­nious solu­tion pro­pelled him from the fourth string to becom­ing the start­ing quar­ter­back. Notably, dur­ing the game, his team ral­lied thanks to his lead­er­ship, tying the score 8–8 with Paulone earn­ing the title of MVP, sub­se­quent­ly lead­ing to a mem­o­rable encounter with NFL leg­end Joe Namath.

As the Cubs pre­pared for their encounter with Indi­ana, Paulone dis­cussed his strat­e­gy, liken­ing his team to dol­phins against the per­ceived “shark” strength of River­side, empha­siz­ing phys­i­cal­i­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Paulone, the game turned out to be a blowout, with the Cubs dom­i­nat­ing 62–18. The Cubs’ impres­sive per­for­mance was under­lined by their phys­i­cal game­play, high­light­ed by a mem­o­rable touch­down play.

In sub­se­quent reflec­tions, Paulone acknowl­edged the Cubs’ prowess, con­ced­ing they were supe­ri­or across the board. The chap­ter pro­gress­es to the Cubs’ forth­com­ing match against the Flori­da School for the Deaf and the Blind, where expec­ta­tions were set for anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant vic­to­ry. Flori­da’s coach expressed hope mere­ly to score, result­ing in an over­whelm­ing 84–8 defeat for his team. The after­math prompt­ed crit­i­cism regard­ing sports­man­ship due to the sheer score­line, with sim­i­lar his­tor­i­cal prece­dents high­light­ing such eth­i­cal dilem­mas in sports.

Ulti­mate­ly, Coach Adams of the Cubs main­tained that win­ning deci­sive­ly was essen­tial despite the back­lash. The team’s dom­i­nat­ing record placed them sec­ond in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s rank­ing for var­si­ty teams, affirm­ing their relent­less pur­suit of vic­to­ry .