Cheerleading redefines inclusion for Las Vegas-area student with Down syndrome

For Gigi Hutchison-Martinez and her mom, inclusion doesn’t mean creating a separate spirit squad so Gigi and other special needs students can cheer on the football team at Green Valley High School.

It means accepting Gigi on the varsity cheerleading squad with 20 girls who don’t have such disabilities and giving her the same experience.

Cheer is her favorite extracurricular activity of many.

“I feel happy,” she said.

Gigi, 16, has Down syndrome. It’s a common genetic condition also known as Trisomy 21, giving her a copy of her 21st chromosome and causing developmental delays, intellectual disability and certain physical and medical conditions and characteristics.

It doesn’t limit her social skills and ability to take advantage of what high school has to offer.

“Gigi likes performing. She loves to be in front of a crowd,” said her cheer coach, Bailey Perryman. “There’s no shyness to her at all.”

This is Gigi’s second year on the cheer team. She is held to the same standard as the other girls at practice, showing up on time, doing the same stretches, jogging the same laps, dancing and doing cartwheels, and snapping her arms as if conjuring the hinged jaw of a Green Valley Gator, while wearing the same uniform and perky bow in her hair.

“When she’s out there cheering,” said her mom, Lori Hutchison, “I don’t see (the Down syndrome).”

Hutchison said Green Valley teachers, administrators and peers are all supportive, and she can’t imagine her daughter at any other school. Gigi, now a sophomore at the Henderson school, has wanted to be here since her older sister played volleyball and Gigi, then about 8 years old, would hype up the audience at games, Hutchison said. Once, she walked away from her elementary school because she wanted to visit Green Valley.

She is working on her confidence to perform more complex stunts with the team. At games, she does stunts with the grade school cheerleaders who perform with the team; at practice, she mimics holding up a teammate’s ankle. Over the summer, she rehearsed jumping up and down from the box that cheerleaders stand on during games.

Perryman said someone once asked her if Gigi was difficult to coach.

“Why do you automatically assume?” she replied.

Hutchison credits Perryman and cheer for helping Gigi thrive. When Gigi entered high school, she was academically at the kindergarten or first-grade level. She is now around a third-grade level. Hutchison said memorizing cheer routines is behind the cognitive improvement.

Gigi is in special education classes for core academics and alongside her typically developing peers for electives: dance; leadership, which allows her to serve on the student council; and video production, where she works at the school station, GVTV. Occasionally, she helps the volleyball team as a manager.

The National Down Syndrome Society and Down Syndrome Education International’s Guidelines for Inclusive Education notes that inclusive schooling is a right under federal law and says that “many students with Down syndrome make significant progress in all areas of their development during their teenage years and early adult life, if given the opportunities to do so.”

“They are teenagers when they reach high school and will be aware of and part of the local teenage culture (music, sports, fashion, etc.),” the document reads. “Their physical development and the onset of puberty is at the same age as their peers. Like all young people, developing self-esteem and a positive self-identity is influenced by the way others treat them and the opportunities they must learn, make choices and take responsibility.”

Her cheer friends treat her well. She responds in kind.

Perryman says sometimes the team members take themselves too seriously, and Gigi breaks the tension.

“She brings light to the team that I didn’t know we needed,” Perryman said.