Participants in the Sparkle Effect program include, from left, Amanda Morgan, freshman cheerleader Sydney Nicolli, and Noelle Koch.Jeff Piorkowski/Special to cleveland.com
MAYFIELD, Ohio — The Sparkle Effect is a national, non-profit organization that pairs student cheerleaders with students with special needs. And while the shaking pom-poms do, indeed, sparkle, so, too, do all the participants’ faces.
It was in November that Kristin Fatica, coach of the freshman cheerleading squad at Mayfield High School, and senior Alex Gibbons, a member of the varsity cheerleading team, got the go ahead to start the Sparkle Effect program at the school.
The district put out the word to parents of students with special needs that their children, if interested, could work with the freshmen cheerleaders and actually cheer at freshmen basketball games.
“We got a great response because it’s a great program,” said Kathleen Morgan, who teaches the multiple disabilities classroom at Mayfield High. Three of the students in Morgan’s classroom, as well as her daughter, Amanda, who has autism, enthusiastically signed on.
“As we went along, more and more kids joined,” said Gibbons, a student who uses two periods per day, including her lunch period, to sit in on special needs classes and work with its students.
Gibbons serves as the Sparkle Effect senior student advisor at the school, teaching cheers and organizing practices and other activities.
In September, Gibbons, of Highland Heights, helped lead a cheerleader drive to raise money to defray medical costs of freshman Kayla Hoover, who is battling brain cancer.
“I wanted to get involved (in Sparkle Effect) after I saw how amazing it was doing the St. Jude (Research Hospital) fundraiser (for Hoover),” Gibbons said.
The students with special needs and their 10 cheerleader buddies have been meeting once per week in the high school’s hallway perfecting their cheers. Together, they have cheered at freshmen boys basketball games and a hockey game. A varsity wrestling match next week will finish up this year’s schedule.
“Sparkle Effect rules say we have to do at least six games, but we’ve done 12 or 13,” Fatica said. “We wish we could do every game.”
While road games are not scheduled, most home games were made Sparkle Effect games.
“(Fans) love it,” said freshman cheerleader Marlee Snider, of Mayfield Heights. “They cheer and take videos.”
Snider said the fans aren’t the only ones feeling good about the Sparkle Effect.
“We (the cheerleaders) we’re so excited when we found out we were going to work with them. We see them in the hallways during the day and say hi to them We have new friends. They get excited and ask about the next practice.”
Morgan said the program allows the students with special needs to make new friends, feel more accepted by their peers, and have an after-school practice to attend, as do many of their high school classmates.
Some of the special needs students attend classes as part of CEVEC, the Cuyahoga Eastern Vocational Education Consortium, made up of 16 area school districts. Fatica formerly taught for CEVEC.
“I was friends with some of them, and now I get to see them all the time,” said a happy Amanda Morgan of her experience with the freshmen cheerleaders. “I can’t wait for Thursdays (practice day), and I have the best partner.”
Morgan’s cheerleading mentor is Sydney Nicolli, of Highland Heights. Nicolli said she is renewing her childhood friendship with Morgan since they were partnered three months ago for their Sparkle Effect experience.
As for cheering in front of a crowd, Amanda said, “I love being before a crowd. I don’t like the noise, but I like cheering. I like to be loud.”
Fatica said she and Gibbons are preparing to seek a Sparkle Effect grant so that cheerleading uniforms can be purchased for the special needs students next year. Because there are no uniforms for their partners, the cheerleaders simply wear black spirit wear and not their regular uniforms when cheering with their new friends.
The inaugural Sparkle Effect team at Mayfield includes three special needs boys.
“The boys are really good,” Fatica said.
One of those boys has been especially delighted by the fact that the cheerleaders have developed a cheer based on one of his favorite sayings.
Myron, like a professional wrestler, likes to point to his bicep and exclaim, “Oh, yeah!” The squad now points to their biceps and enthuses, “We are Mayfield! Oh, yeah!”
Fatica said that, during a recent game, the freshman boys basketball team even joined in on the cheer.
Next year, plans call for the Sparkle Effect to also cheer at home football games.
Because the Sparkle Effect is a student-run activity, and because Gibbons will be graduating this spring, plans are in place to keep the program going. This year’s junior advisor, Shannon Biega, will become the senior advisor, while current sophomores Jenni Hayes and Taylor Willrich, will step up to serve as junior advisors.
“We want to make sure that it keeps on going,” Gibbons said.
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