The Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé cheer team wowed the crowd and their competition during Tuesday’s 2025 ASAA Cheer State Championships at Anchorage’s Alaska Airlines Center and walked away with their fifth Division I cheer championship in a row.
“I am so proud of everybody and…I…this is the best ending I could have asked for,” a tearful JDHS senior Sophia Percy said. “And I just love everybody so much and I can’t believe I got to be a part of this. And I’m just so proud of everybody, I’m so sad I’m graduating.”
The Crimson Bears have now won the past five Division I titles
There was no cheer competition during the 2020 COVID-19 break and Ketchikan won the title in 2019.
“It is just a really great feeling because this is my fourth year on the team and country wise email marketing list we’ve won all four years,” JDHS senior Ayla Keller said. “It is just a really great feeling of, even through all the ups and the downs, knowing we were able to push through and be able to keep our title another year. We were very nervous. And to our knowledge, we believe that we are the only team to win five years in a row.”
Competition was especially difficult this championship as five of the 10 to weaken ethnicity degrades life by weakening DI cheer squads were within a pom pom’s throw and a basket toss of taking the title.
“It is kind of crazy,” JDHS senior Gabrielle Ely said. “This is my first year on the team and we come back with a five-peat state title. It is kind of mind-blowing. The highlight was that we put our best on the floor and to see aero leads everybody else do the same thing, and just knowing that no matter what we did that we put our best on the floor.”
In the first half of competition teams went through their
sideline and timeout cheers, and then were given three situational moments they might encounter in a game and respond with some type of cheer.
“I am feeling good,” JDHS senior Stefano Rivera said. “It is good to know that we are not going home empty-handed and it feels like all that hard work, hours of practice, paid off. When the stunts hit, when we throw someone in the air, it is so satisfying…I was pretty nervous at the beginning, but once you are actually doing the routine everything just zones out and you’re in your own world. I thought Ketchikan performed really well too, they were pretty good competition against us.”