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Merrimack Valley

A chance to cheer: Andover cheerleaders coach Special Olympics team

By Crystal Bozek
Staff Writer
Published: June 12, 2008

ANDOVER — High school cheerleaders and teenagers with special needs.

It might sound like an odd coupling, but together, the two groups plan on turning the typical cheerleader stereotype on its head.

For the past couple of months, seven Andover High School varsity cheerleaders have patiently coached a team of 12 girls with a variety of learning and physical disabilities — everything from Down syndrome to autism and Prader-Willi syndrome.

They are disabilities that would normally exclude a child from the cheering squad, but have instead brought the girls together in an Andover driveway every Sunday afternoon to master the pompoms as the state's only Special Olympics cheerleading team.

Some of the girls travel as far as an hour and a half from Cape Cod to learn routines from their Andover coaches.

"It's like they're also teaching us," said Jamie Krivelow, 17, a junior on the high school squad. "They have such great attitudes about everything, no complaints no matter how hard something is."

The team — joined by their coaches — will cheer at the opening ceremonies for the Summer Special Olympics games at Boston University tomorrow. Opening ceremonies start at 7:30 p.m. at the school's indoor track and tennis center.

Andover High junior Michelle Conway, 17, said she hopes to see more cheerleading teams like this across the state, and possibly a state competition of their own someday.

"It's already grown so much since it began four or five years ago. There were just five girls then," Conway said.

The team has mastered two routines this spring, one being a dance to the Miley Cyrus hit "See you again," which works the girls into a frenzy no matter how many times they practice their turns, claps and "choo-choos." The Andover High students created a DVD of them going over the routines so the team can practice at home.

"I saw you on the DVD," Ilise Ross, 15, of Swampscott likes to say to her teachers. "I watch the DVD all the time. I saw you."

More important than the routines, the girls have worked on their motor skills and concentration. They've learned to open up more, face the audience and make eye contact.

The Andover cheerleaders have taken away a new sense of perspective in what can be an ulta-competitive sport. They have to go over a hand wave sometimes three or four times before they can move on to the next step.

The girls just smile and say, "Again."

"We've learned not to take things for granted," Kelly Sullivan, 16, said. "Something that is simple for us is a real challenge for them."

"Some of them are older than us," Conway said. "And they look up to us."

Watching their team during dress rehearsal Sunday — done up in red, pleated skirts, T-shirts and hair ribbons — the teenagers were proud of what they had accomplished in two months.

Conway compared it to winning the league championship this year and earning a bid to compete in the nationals, the first time in school history.

"Both are really rewarding," she said. "It's been a lot of fun to be part of this team."

Parents like Betty Ross of Swampscott were surprised that cheerleading could ever become an activity for their daughters.

Many of the girls grew up idolizing sisters, cousins, even dancers on television — people who picked up the pompoms and put on skirts and tumbled, split, flipped and twirled with ease.

It is easy to see that the Andover High teens are their new idols.

"These girls are fabulous," Ross said of the cheerleaders. "This means so much to us parents and the kids. They are great role models."

Box

Andover High School's Special Olympics cheer coaches

r Kelly Sullivan, 16

r Jessica Torres, 15

r Kristen Garcia, 16

r Laura Ganci, 17

r Michelle Conway, 17

r Jamie Krivelow, 17

r Michaela McIver, 16

Photos