Put Your Hands Together for Helix Senior Cheerleader Lily Esquer-Horta

Updated at 10:40 p.m. Thursday

At the CIF quarterfinal football game between Helix and Torrey Pines, the press box announcer took a moment to recognize the 11 senior cheerleaders for the host Highlanders.

“Irene Aguilar,” he began, followed by Briana Branch, Fay Brown and others—with each girl pirouetting to face the crowd with a flourish.

But when the PA system announced “Lily Esquer-Horta,” the 18-year-old didn’t move. Not a silent protest or inattention, it was a rare instance when she wasn’t prompted by hand signal.

Esquer-Horta simply didn’t hear her name.

Deaf since birth, Esquer-Horta has missed few moments to shine on the sidelines this season.

She has served as the varsity cheerleader’s call leader. She’s overcome an ankle injury. And longtime Helix cheerleading coach Beth Leighton says her skills as a first-year varsity squad member are “right there” with others, rating a B grade for being so focused on her moves that she can forget to smile.

Boasting a 3.85 grade-point average, Esquer-Horta has applied for a lot of scholarships, she says via her district-provided sign-language interpreter, Julie Foleno.

She even took a five-day trip recently to Washington, D.C.—home of the Gallaudet University, the world-renowned liberal arts college for the hearing-impaired.

Esquer-Horta had no disease that caused the impairment, she says. She was born that way. Though she got a cochlear implant at age 6, she has trouble hearing many sounds and can’t make out certain words. She can sometimes read lips, but mostly communicates via American Sign Language—which five or six other cheerleaders also are learning.

“People tell me beforehand when to start,” says Esquer-Horta, who lives with her parents and a 21-year-old brother in San Diego near the National City border. She drives herself to school.

She made mistakes in the beginning, but overcame them, saying: “It’s a personal confidence thing.”

She’s competed in swimming at Helix—specializing in the 50-yard freestyle, where she knows to start from a light flash and a hand signal.

So why cheerleading?

“I just decided to try,” she said. “Why not take advantage of it for the first time?”

She says she enjoys learning new cheers and dances—and the support of the crowd. Besides football, she’s cheered at water polo, field hockey and volleyball.

Esquer-Horta came to Helix her sophomore year. She attended another school but didn’t think deaf students got enough support.

At Helix, which has about 18 deaf students, she feels more at home—and became vice president of the Deaf Helix Highlanders Club.

She’d like to teach English at a deaf school someday, she says.

But for now, she’s a typical overbooked teen.

“My mom tells me that I’m never home,” she says with a smile. “I’m always doing stuff.”

Among her obligations is the senior project—she’ll direct a play about deaf culture called ASL Rocks.  She’ll put on the show at Cuyamaca College in February.

Esquer-Horta applauds her coach, Leighton, who has been guiding cheerleaders at Helix for 21 of her 23 years at the school.

“She’s wonderful, nice, sweet, understands—always there for us,” the teen says in a flurry of gestures.

She says Leighton has the same expectations for her as the others—even if she is the first deaf cheerleader in Helix memory.

“She wants us to look good for the crowd,” she says.

At Friday night’s CIF semifinal, where the Scotties beat the Mission Hills Grizzles of San Marcos 21-0, the announcer again read off the names of the senior cheerleaders.

This time, with an interpreter nearby, she got the signal. With a blazing smile, Esquer-Horta hit her mark—pompon punched high in the air.