Moraga author wins Christopher Award for a remarkable sports story

Thomas Fuller, Moraga, Calif., won a Christopher Award for the book The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory, (Doubleday/Penguin Random House). It is one of 12 books for adults and young people honored as the Christopher Awards program marks its 76th year.

The Awards celebrate authors, illustrators, writers, producers and directors, whose work “affirms the highest values of the human spirit” and reflect the Christopher motto, “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”

The book tells the story of an all-deaf high school football team’s triumphant climb from underdog to undefeated, their inspirational brotherhood, a portrait of deafness in America, and the indefatigable head coach of the California School for the Deaf in Riverside’s team. The inspiring coach, Keith Adams, a deaf former athlete, performed what seemed impossible for the state-run school with only 168 high school students. One student spent the majority of the season sleeping in his father’s car in the Target parking lot. Another fiercely committed athlete played through a broken leg in order not to miss a crucial game to name just two.

After years of covering war, wildfires, pandemic, and mass shootings, Fuller was captivated by the uplifting, happy story of this group of high school boys especially during the gloom of the pandemic. It was not an ordinary sports story.

Fuller is Page One Correspondent for The New York Times based in Northern California. He has reported from more than 40 countries for The Times and International Herald Tribune. He has covered military coups in Thailand, natural disasters across Southeast Asia and the military dictatorship in Myanmar. He was also European Union correspondent and covered the start of the Iraq war in 2003 and the Arab Spring in 2011. In the 1990s he took a year off to travel around the world by motorcycle. He spent his early years in Tuckahoe, New York, and lives with his wife, also a journalist, and two children in the East Bay of San Francisco.

Christopher Awards were also given to creators of 9 TV/Cable shows and feature films. They celebrate authors and illustrators as well as writers, producers and directors whose work “affirms the highest values of the human spirit” and reflects the Christopher motto, “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness” which also guides the organization’s publishing and radio programs.

Tony Rossi, The Christophers’ Director of Communications, said, “Our award-winning stories, both true and fictional, highlight people who have the odds stacked against them, but who face their challenges with faith and perseverance, allowing them to move through the darkness into the light and serve a higher purpose than themselves. In other words, these books, films, and TV programs don’t just engage and entertain; they teach, they heal, and they inspire.”

The Christophers, a nonprofit founded in 1945 by Maryknoll Father James Keller, is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition of service to God and humanity. More information about The Christophers is available at www.christophers.org.

Social media: #ChristopherAwards, Facebook: The Christophers / X: @ChristophersInc