Considering this is a Pirate-free, Transformer-free, Harry Potter-free summer, the news for middle-schoolers is about as good as it gets.Sydney Pequignot is ready to cheer. Dressed in a red, white and blue uniform, she claps her hands together, takes a running leap and turns a cartwheel, landing on both feet.
“Mom!” she says. “Another cartwheel?”
Next to pom-poms, cartwheels and tumbling is Pequignot’s favorite part of cheerleading, she says.
“Watch,” she says, attempting a handstand and finishing with a somersault. “I keep trying the handstand.”
Once a week, Sydney, 8, attends cheerleading class at Dance Till You Drop in Columbia City. The rest of her time – when she’s not reading, swimming or riding a four-wheeler with her dad – is spent practicing her cheers in her living room, sometimes until bedtime.
“She’s always go, go, go,” her mom Denise Pequignot says.
Sydney, a third grader at Little Turtle Elementary School, was born with Down syndrome, a condition caused by the presence of an extra chromosome (part of a person’s DNA) in her body. But for her, it’s her ability, not her disability, that defines who she is.
Recently, Sydney was one of 30 models chosen to participate in Down Syndrome Indiana’s Fashion Week show in Indianapolis. She’s also modeled at the disABILITIES Expo at Memorial Coliseum and competed in the Miss You Can Do It Pageant (alongside 5-year-old Kylie Bigham of Fort Wayne) in Illinois.
But cheering is her first love.
“She loves the applause,” her mom says. “She loves the stage, the performance. And everyone is so open to her.”
Sydney doesn’t know yet what she wants to be when she grows up, but her mom puts no restrictions on her because of her disability. So, college, marriage and career are not off limits.
As for her future, there’s one thing Sydney is sure of.
“I want a play kitchen,” she says. “And I want to work at Cookie Cottage.”
