While watching the gravity races on Sammamish’s plateau last year, Michael Engen looked over and realized that his son, David, wasn’t watching the races. He was watching the Issaquah High School cheerleaders, who quickly gave him a pair of pom-poms and invited him to join them.
David, who has Down syndrome, loved it.
“He really just likes being part of a group,” said Engen. So, it wasn’t long before he mentioned the experience to David’s teacher at Interlake High School, Heather McLean.
McLean, who is in her 16th year with the school’s PACIFIC Program for disabled students and is also the head cheerleading coach for the Interlake Saints cheerleading squad, almost immediately thought it was a great idea.
“I wanted something new to bring to the squad,” said McLean, who also coaches the gymnastics team. McLean had coached a student with Down Syndrome on her gymnastics squad for four years, so she knew it wasn’t a question of if, but how.
Enter The Sparkle Effect, an organization started in 2008 by Sarah Cronk at Pleasant Valley High School in Bettendorf, Iowa when she was just 15 years old. They reportedly have helped establish cheerleading programs that blend students with and without disabilities in more than 150 schools in 26 states.
To become an affiliated team, McLean spent the spring and summer filling out a lengthy application, gathering letters of support from parents and administrators and interviewing with the organization. The details of practice times, routines and at which games the team would cheer were up for debate and consideration.
For Interlake’s games, McLean chose basic cheers the crowds could do with the Sparkle team that don’t depend on the score of game and would be used for both basketball and football. The team sticks to junior varsity games and generally only cheers for the first half, so as not to overstimulate the students.
While The Sparkle Effect recommends starting with a team of three to five students, interest had grown enough that the Interlake team started with seven.
“Talk about a big community around you, right?” said McLean.
More than five million students with disabilities attend public schools in the United States, yet most school sports and activities fail to accommodate these students, according to The Sparkle Effect.
Parents of students with disabilities report that participation on a Sparkle Effect team results in better school attendance and higher grades. Moreover, the organization says it has seen participants with disabilities more likely to eventually join additional school-based extracurricular clubs, like drama, newspaper, choir, and band and activities that fail to accommodate these students.
On Interlake’s team, McLean placed an emphasis on building relationships and making sure all students are included.
“I like Sparkle. You get to make a lot of new friends and it doesn’t matter if you’re different,” said Connie Banda, a member of Interlake’s Sparkle team. “They still accept you. In the hallways, they’ll come up to you and say hi.”
All of the cheerleaders are required to attend the Sparkle practices and do team-building exercises. Following a longstanding Interlake cheer tradition, both teams collectively conducted a start-of-the-season ritual normally done at cheer camp in which they each shared their goals and their achievements thus far while passing around a colorful string of yarn. Students can often be seen on campus or at games with a piece of the yarn tied into their shoelaces, a common bond that the Sparkle team is now a part of.
“It’s like my family. I look at the Sparkle cheerleaders at games and assemblies and they have these big smiles on, it makes me so happy, I want to cry,” said Brittany “B.B.” Stevens, an Interlake cheerleader and Sparkle captain.
McLean has seen football players chatting with the Sparkle team members in the hallways between class. On the night of the Sparkle team’s first game – the freshman tailgate – Interlake Saints cheerleaders who weren’t on the field that night took to the stands to help out.
“It worked out perfectly that there were girls in the stands to help the freshmen students learn the cheers – it helped the sparkle squad and was really supportive,” McLean said.
As the season has gone on, there has been an outpouring of support from the Interlake community.
“At first, I don’t know if a lot of people in the community knew what was going on, but I have had so many text messages, emails, Facebook messages from friends, former peer tutors,” said McLean. “Adding our Sparkle team has been a lot of work, but it’s been rewarding.”
