Blind Cheerleader Stays In Step

As the Wilbur Cross Governors hustled to a post-season basketball win over the North Haven Indians, another victory took place on the sidelines, one that has been repeated all season whenever Brianna Rigsbee steps up to chant, clap, and dance with her cheerleading squad.

“R‑E-B-O-U-N‑D! Rebound!” the 15-year-old freshman (pictured) called out Thursday night as she stepped through the syncopated claps and stomps along with the other Cross cheerleaders.

Born with a condition called microphthalmia, Brianna has never been able to see. That hasn’t stopped her from becoming the school’s first blind cheerleader and earning her squad’s MVP award at the end of the football season.

Her journey has inspired her teammates, among whom she’s found a supportive ​“family.” It’s also brought Brianna newfound confidence and maturity, according to her mother, Beaver Hills/West Hills Alderwoman Angela Russell.

This past fall Brianna started telling her mom she was desperate to join the cheerleading squad. ​“She was so persistent,” Russell recalled.

At first, Russell didn’t pay much mind. It wasn’t what she had imagined for Brianna. ​“It just wasn’t something that registered with me.”

Like a lot of parents of blind children, Russell had tried to get her daughter interested in music, in playing the piano. It didn’t take. So Russell has learned to follow her children where their interests take them, she said. Her 11-year-old son has been drumming since he was 3. Her 8‑year-old son carries his sketchbook with him wherever he goes.

Brianna said she’s not sure why the cheerleading bug bit her so hard. ​“I just thought it would be cool,” she said. ​“I just thought the coach was cool.”

That coach, Victoria Lassek, is Brianna’s freshman math teacher. She remembers the day she announced to the class that cheerleading tryouts were coming up. She encouraged girls to show up. Brianna left the class, then came back the next period and announced her intention to cheer.

“I said, ​‘OK,’” Lassek recalled. Privately, she had no idea how she was going to make it work.

To her surprise, and to everyone else’s, Brianna has taken to cheering almost effortlessly.

“She came in and immediately clicked with the girls,” Lassek said. ​“The team loves her. The team absolutely loves her.”

In practices, which happen every day after school, Brianna begins by learning the words of a new cheer. She picks them up almost instantaneously, by all accounts.

Learning the movements is a little more difficult, and something Brianna is still perfecting. Coach Lassek or a cheerleader will stand behind Brianna and move her limbs to teach her new steps and arm movements. She’s learned to do the trademark split-legged leap of a cheerleader in time with her teammates, who count off the timing out loud.

Tashara Salters, a 17-year-old senior and captain of the team, said Coach Lassek assigned her to look after Brianna on the first day of practice. ​“I was a little nervous,” Salters recalled. Pretty soon she was moved to tears by the way Brianna overcame her blindness to learn the cheers.

Brianna inspires the whole team, Salters said.

“They love me,” Brianna said with a smile on Thursday before the game.

There are no ​“Mean Girls” in sight on the Wilbur Cross cheerleading squad. No sniping, back-stabbing, too-cool alpha teen females you see in TV and movies.

As they stood on the sidelines waiting for the starting buzzer on Thursday, freshmen Patricia Bautista and Leah Chapparo held hands with Brianna and played with her hair. They marveled at how good Brianna’s hearing is, how she will laugh at jokes that are told quietly on the other side of the room.

“She has this sixth sense,” Patricia said. Brianna can even tell when Patricia is making faces at her, she said.

They chatted about the music on Brianna’s iPod touch, which she has configured so that it gives her audio cues that allow her to navigate its menus. They talked about the TV show Degrassi. Brianna ​“watches” TV by listening to broadcasts, sometimes with someone to tell her what’s happening visually.

Thursday’s game began at 6:30 p.m., with the cheering squad in two staggered rows by the baseline. Brianna stood, arms akimbo, in the middle of the back row.

“Bree, baby, take a step to your right please,” said Coach Lassek. She checked in periodically with Brianna, reminding her of some moves or re-positioning her. For the most part, Brianna hit her marks on her own.

Cheers were ordered up by Lassek or by one of the team captains, and Brianna fell right in step. She didn’t always do all the spins, shimmies, and steps her teammates did. But she knew all the words and all the clapping and stomping rhythms.

“T‑A. K‑E. Take that ball away!” the squad chanted as Wilbur Cross struggled in the first quarter.

“One! We are the Governors! Two! We can’t hear you! Three! A little bit louder! Four! More, more, more!” they chanted.

“Bree, arm up,” coach Lassek reminded her.

Brianna raised her arms along with the rest of the squad when the Governors took foul shots and lowered them when she heard the ball swish through the net.

The Governors pulled far ahead in the third quarter. The Indians challenged again in the fourth. Wilbur Cross held them off to win 66 – 59. The Governors will play Hillhouse on Saturday in East Haven. The winner of that game will go on to the finals.

After Thursday night’s game, Brianna put on her black down jacket, posed for some photos, and exchanged cell phone numbers with freshman Rhiannon Hoffman, a new friend on the squad. They promised to hang out soon.

Russell said she’s seen a change in her daughter since she started cheering. ​“She’s become more responsible, more independent, and really outgoing.”

“I’m very proud of her,” Russell said.

“She saw something she wanted to do,” and she went for it, Russell said, using the language of sight to describe a daughter with a vision all her own.