The Haines High School cheerleaders Tuesday topped four much larger schools to win their division at the state competition in Anchorage.
“For little, tiny Haines to beat these other schools was a very cool thing in itself, and we just nailed it,” said coach Teri Bastable-Podsiki. “The girls absolutely did a perfect routine.”
Seniors Teslin Podsiki and Amanda Smalley, juniors Maggie Daly and Cassie Galasso, sophomore Margarette Jones and freshman Serena Badgley represented Haines and defeated squads from Anchorage Christian, Homer, Sitka and West Anchorage to take the trophy.
Following the announcement that Haines had bested runner-up Sitka, the team went out for pizza and French silk pie to celebrate. Bastable-Podsiki said several supporters in Haines sent messages to offer their congratulations.
The event ran along with the state basketball tournament.
“You are not divided up like basketball, where when you come to the state championship there are four divisions,” Bastable-Podsiki said. “With cheerleading, there are six divisions, and it’s about team size, not anything to do with school size, and whether you are a building team or a non-building team, and if you have boys.”
The Haines girls were in the small building, or stunting, division, for teams with up to 11 members.
“We’ve won four championships out of five years coming up here, and we’ve never competed in the same division,” Bastable-Podsiki said.
Haines in the past had larger teams that often were coed.
“I’ve coached 13 different years, and I’ve never coached a team this size before; they’ve always been bigger,” Bastable-Podsiki said. “These girls really have a tight bond with each other. They’re really good friends, they all are really motivated, they’re hard-working and they really understood what it took to create a clean routine.”
The cheerleaders are on the Haines dance team, as well.
“They’re the only team in the state that is a dance team and a cheer team,” Bastable-Podsiki said. “This competition doesn’t have anything to do with dance, so they just got to focus on cheer, and that was good, too.”
The girls also entered a five-person stunt competition that helped ease their nerves before the overall team event.
“That is where five of the team members put up as many stunts as they can in one minute, to music,” Bastable-Podsiki said.
Their later winning team routine had a time limit of two and a half minutes and was the same as what they performed at the Region V high school basketball tournament in Juneau earlier this month.
The girls impressed their choreographer, Leon Reynolds, who works with world-class squads in Wasilla. The routine featured a music section, cheer and another dance section with music, and the cheerleaders showed off their stunts and tumbling.
“It was clean, all their stunts went up, they were enthusiastic, their motion technique was right on and their jump section was absolutely wonderful,” Bastable-Podsiki said. “It was just so exciting to watch.”
She will send off her daughter and Smalley to graduation.
Most of the team was to make the drive home Thursday, while students Podsiki and Jones started on their Haines Venture Scouts trip to Ecuador.