Miss-Delectable
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 17,158
- Reaction score
- 7
Steward "In Our Backyard": Innovative A-11 offense finds a new language at California School for the Deaf - San Jose Mercury News
CALIFORNIA SCHOOL For The Deaf football coach Kevin Bella clearly is a man who believes in pushing the envelope of communication. I learned that quickly trying to figure out the best way to conduct an interview with him for this column.
Since I was aware Bella himself is deaf, I wrote him an e-mail with an accompanying list of questions I had. He e-mailed back and suggested that we simply do a telephone interview.
Huh? I scratched my head and agreed, not really knowing how that would work. But he subsequently called me Monday and we conducted a good half-hour phone conversation through a remote sign-language interpreter. It was a fascinating first for me but obviously no big deal for him.
Bella was a dynamic first-year football coach in 2002 when CSD posted a 9-2 record, became the Bay Football League co-champion, made it to the North Coast Section B Division title game and posted six shutouts while being named National Deaf Prep Team of the Year.
But he left the school after that season, returning last year. Things didn't go nearly as well in his coaching second coming, as the Eagles went 2-8 in 2008.
"Last year was a difficult learning experience for me," Bella said. "It was a team in a rebuilding phase, and we didn't really like what we saw. So we decided it was time for some changes."
Hence, Bella pushed the envelope again. He introduced to his program the A-11 offense, the innovative but highly technical scheme unveiled at Piedmont High in 2007. He not only believed deaf student-athletes could master the offense, but that it was ideally suited to a school of CSD's size. He contacted Kurt Bryan, Piedmont's coach, to determine how to implement it.
"That A-11 offense really attracted me, so my assistants and I got together with Kurt and we hashed it out, and sure enough, he convinced us to bind to the offense," Bella said. "We're a small school — enrollment is about 185 students — so if we're going to play in the BFL against schools twice our size, we need to do something different."
Even though it was only introduced this summer to his initially skeptical team, CSD debuted its A-11 last Friday against Valley Christian of Roseville and rolled to a 33-0 victory. It was 26-0 at halftime, and Bella actually had to pull back on the reins. For an encore, CSD's junior varsity, which hadn't won a game in four years, also was victorious while running the A-11.
Not surprisingly, the coach was effusive about the aid of Bryan and his staff for their assistance and patience in getting things up and running.
"I could see pretty much right away (in the game) that this offense was going to work for us," Bella said.
But how do hearing-impaired players operate an offense with so many variables and alignments?
"Really, practice reps are the key," he said. "Piedmont is an advanced version of the A-11 with all of their shifts. We didn't get into as much of the shifting as they do. We shifted quite a bit for us, and we would communicate plays through sign language. Because we're using sign language, the opposing players didn't really understand what we were talking about. But we also had the plays on wristbands."
It should make for an interesting challenge when CSD travels to Austin, Texas, this Friday for a much-anticipated game with Texas School for the Deaf, the first of a home-and-home between the schools engineered by CSD athletic director Kevin Kovacs and TSD's AD, Fritz Hamilton. For one, it may be a bit tougher to sign the play calls.
"I guess it's one of those things we're going to have to figure out," Bella said. "We'll probably rely on the wristbands more than we do normally. Either that, we'll come up with some signs that may be understood (by the other team), but is actually a code for something else."
Bella knows about cutting-edge ways to communicate. When he left CSD in 2002, he went to work for Purple Communications in Rocklin, a company that develops and markets the kind of technologies for the hearing impaired that made our telephone interview such a seamless endeavor.
Bella might have stayed there, too, but he had to spend a lot of time away from his wife, who works at CSD, and his son, who attends the school. He also felt an obligation tugging at him.
"I always wanted to give back to CSD," he said. "I'm an alumni of the school, CSD really taught me to appreciate what I have, and I want to be a role model for other students, and I thought my experience in the corporate world was a good match for coming back. I always wanted to teach kids more than just what the textbook says and more about what life has to offer."
Bella teaches career exploration at CSD in addition to his coaching duties. He's pushing his pupils not only to the mainstream but to the forefront of life's — and football's — possibilities. That came through loudly, even over the phone from a person who can't hear.
CALIFORNIA SCHOOL For The Deaf football coach Kevin Bella clearly is a man who believes in pushing the envelope of communication. I learned that quickly trying to figure out the best way to conduct an interview with him for this column.
Since I was aware Bella himself is deaf, I wrote him an e-mail with an accompanying list of questions I had. He e-mailed back and suggested that we simply do a telephone interview.
Huh? I scratched my head and agreed, not really knowing how that would work. But he subsequently called me Monday and we conducted a good half-hour phone conversation through a remote sign-language interpreter. It was a fascinating first for me but obviously no big deal for him.
Bella was a dynamic first-year football coach in 2002 when CSD posted a 9-2 record, became the Bay Football League co-champion, made it to the North Coast Section B Division title game and posted six shutouts while being named National Deaf Prep Team of the Year.
But he left the school after that season, returning last year. Things didn't go nearly as well in his coaching second coming, as the Eagles went 2-8 in 2008.
"Last year was a difficult learning experience for me," Bella said. "It was a team in a rebuilding phase, and we didn't really like what we saw. So we decided it was time for some changes."
Hence, Bella pushed the envelope again. He introduced to his program the A-11 offense, the innovative but highly technical scheme unveiled at Piedmont High in 2007. He not only believed deaf student-athletes could master the offense, but that it was ideally suited to a school of CSD's size. He contacted Kurt Bryan, Piedmont's coach, to determine how to implement it.
"That A-11 offense really attracted me, so my assistants and I got together with Kurt and we hashed it out, and sure enough, he convinced us to bind to the offense," Bella said. "We're a small school — enrollment is about 185 students — so if we're going to play in the BFL against schools twice our size, we need to do something different."
Even though it was only introduced this summer to his initially skeptical team, CSD debuted its A-11 last Friday against Valley Christian of Roseville and rolled to a 33-0 victory. It was 26-0 at halftime, and Bella actually had to pull back on the reins. For an encore, CSD's junior varsity, which hadn't won a game in four years, also was victorious while running the A-11.
Not surprisingly, the coach was effusive about the aid of Bryan and his staff for their assistance and patience in getting things up and running.
"I could see pretty much right away (in the game) that this offense was going to work for us," Bella said.
But how do hearing-impaired players operate an offense with so many variables and alignments?
"Really, practice reps are the key," he said. "Piedmont is an advanced version of the A-11 with all of their shifts. We didn't get into as much of the shifting as they do. We shifted quite a bit for us, and we would communicate plays through sign language. Because we're using sign language, the opposing players didn't really understand what we were talking about. But we also had the plays on wristbands."
It should make for an interesting challenge when CSD travels to Austin, Texas, this Friday for a much-anticipated game with Texas School for the Deaf, the first of a home-and-home between the schools engineered by CSD athletic director Kevin Kovacs and TSD's AD, Fritz Hamilton. For one, it may be a bit tougher to sign the play calls.
"I guess it's one of those things we're going to have to figure out," Bella said. "We'll probably rely on the wristbands more than we do normally. Either that, we'll come up with some signs that may be understood (by the other team), but is actually a code for something else."
Bella knows about cutting-edge ways to communicate. When he left CSD in 2002, he went to work for Purple Communications in Rocklin, a company that develops and markets the kind of technologies for the hearing impaired that made our telephone interview such a seamless endeavor.
Bella might have stayed there, too, but he had to spend a lot of time away from his wife, who works at CSD, and his son, who attends the school. He also felt an obligation tugging at him.
"I always wanted to give back to CSD," he said. "I'm an alumni of the school, CSD really taught me to appreciate what I have, and I want to be a role model for other students, and I thought my experience in the corporate world was a good match for coming back. I always wanted to teach kids more than just what the textbook says and more about what life has to offer."
Bella teaches career exploration at CSD in addition to his coaching duties. He's pushing his pupils not only to the mainstream but to the forefront of life's — and football's — possibilities. That came through loudly, even over the phone from a person who can't hear.