By Crocker Stephenson

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The New Berlin Eisenhower High School boys basketball team in Wisconsin was hosting the Cudahy Packers, and they had already opened up a pretty solid lead by halftime. The buzzer sounded, and the boys cleared off the floor.

A thick rubbery mat was unrolled, and out came Sparkle, an Eisenhower cheer team of six special needs athletes and five members of the varsity cheer team.

Sparkle had been practicing and practicing this particular routine, and its members, all girls, were unveiling it to the public. They planned to use it in their upcoming competitions.

There was a lot of spirited yelling, tumbling and dancing, and then came the show-stopper: a double-pyramid. On the top of one of the pyramids was Tilly Gillard.

She was shining like a star on top of a Christmas tree.

Debbie and Mike Gillard have three kids. Tilly, who is 16, is in the middle.

When Debbie was pregnant, the Gillards knew they were going to have a daughter. They had picked out her name: Matilda.

It wasn’t until Tilly was born that they discovered she had Down syndrome and that she would require heart surgery.

For the heart surgery to happen, Tilly would need to gain 3 pounds. Debbie remembers trying to feed Tilly every hour. Tilly struggled to eat. In general, babies consume 6 or 8 ounces in the course of a feeding. Debbie measured Tilly’s hourly feedings in milliliters.

It was exhausting, but Tilly made it through. As Tilly grew older, Debbie worried if Tilly would be accepted by her peers. In kindergarten, when birthdays included the entire class, Tilly was included, too.

“Then they get a little older,” Debbie says, “and the social groups get a little smaller and she’s not going to birthday parties anymore.

“You kind of work through those things.”

It helped that Tilly proved to be a dynamo. She is as fearless as she is outgoing.

Debbie says that when she and Tilly go to the grocery store, Tilly works the checkout line like someone running for mayor.

“By the time we leave,” Debbie says, “the person in front of us, the person behind us and the cashier are all our new best friend: ‘Hi! I love your earrings. How are you today? I love your tattoo!’ ”

When Jody Brill, who is a special education paraprofessional at New Berlin and the coach of the Sparkle team, began recruiting athletes, Tilly was a natural.

Brill had cheered for New Berlin West in the 1970s, back when, she says, students like Tilly were all but invisible to their classmates. She’d been wanting to create a cheering team of special needs and typical kids for years.

But it was Hailey Fortier, a senior on the varsity team, who got things going. She approached Brill with the idea in September. By October, Sparkle had its first practice.

“It was getting them involved in the school,” Hailey says. “I wanted them to be recognized.”

The routines are designed by the varsity members of the team. Tilly says the top of a pyramid is where she belongs.

“It’s called ‘flying,’” she says.