Down syndrome doesn't limit teen on Mount Prospect cheer team

When the Mount Prospect Cheerleading Club's varsity team took the floor at the recent state championships, Jill Sevilla, 13, of Mount Prospect stood front and center.

As one of the smaller cheerleaders on the team, she served as a front spotter during the squad's stunts, but quickly assumed her regular position for the rest of the 2½-minute routine, filled with jumps, tumbling and a short dance sequence.

“That's my favorite part,” Jill says, “the dancing.”

The team wound up taking fifth place in the medium division during the third annual state tournament, hosted by the Illinois Recreational Cheerleading Association and held at the Sears Centre arena in Hoffman Estates.

But in the eyes of many in the audience, they came away as winners.

Out of the 225 cheerleading and poms teams or nearly 2,500 teens and preteens that took part Jill was one of the only competitors to have Down syndrome.

But that didn't hold her back, and the team, it appears, did not make any special concessions for her.

“We've been working on this routine since July,” says one of her coaches, Jess Wenk of Des Plaines. “Jill had almost every single motion down and just stuck it.”

The team as a whole had to overcome some obstacles, with girls suffering injuries during the season, including broken arms, a knee injury and concussions.

Randi Lehnert of Des Plaines, who coaches the team with Wenk, said the team worked especially hard over the last few weeks to come together to polish their routine for state level competition and Jill was with them every step of the way.

“She's never off count, and she always knows where she should be,” Lehnert says. “She is definitely able to hold her own.”

Jill is an eighth-grader at Lincoln Junior High School in Mount Prospect, where she is in mainstream classes for language arts and Spanish, while taking math and science with her special education classmates.

At Lincoln, Jill pursues her love of dancing as a member of the poms team and also sings in the choir. When asked what is her favorite subject, she pauses to decide whether it's math or reading.

“Math, I think,” she says ultimately.

Her recent brush with state competition was a first for her, but she was not a bit nervous, her coaches say. After all, it came after she had cheered on the sidelines of the Mount Prospect Football Association games since third grade.

What's more, her team had qualified for state by taking first at their last two competitions earlier this year.

Jill's parents, Pablo and Linda, say their daughter continues to amaze them, but then they continue to set the bar high. As the second of their four children, she keeps up with her siblings and classmates and never looks back.

They eagerly look forward to high school and the many opportunities it offers, both academically and through extracurricular activities.

“She never ceases to amaze us,” Linda Sevilla says. “We're just so proud of her.”