The ANHS varsity cheer team won their first competition of the season due to their energy and unmistakable passion for promoting school spirit. The comp was held at Brea Olinda High School on Jan. 10, with the varsity cheer team taking home first place. This was a big win for them as they were competing against lots of other competitive varsity cheer teams.
As USA National Champions, they are always working hard and practicing diligently to perfect their routines. Cheer practices during first period, yet they often practice before and even hold after school practices to really clean up their routines. They go through the motions, practice cheers, clean and do conditioning to maintain their stamina.
Molly Davis (12) and Ella Volokhine (12) are the 2025-2026 varsity cheer captains and have been leading the team to success through their bright energy and immense effort in and out of practice.
Many people think that cheerleading is easy and barely a sport; however, that is not the case. Pulling off stunts and following routines all still while projecting your voice is incredibly difficult, especially when you’re trying to synchronize with twenty other girls.
The cheer team knows this, so they make sure to put in the time and effort into perfecting their routines as best they can, which led them to their ultimate success on winning the first comp of the season. It not only helps them win competitions and nail performances, but it also boosts the team morale, leading to more genuine and passionate cheers for an even more stellar performance.
“We try to make sure that the team as a whole knows what to do and that we’re all on the same page,” says Volokhine. “It’s the strategy that has worked the best for us, and we’re sticking with it.”
Since basketball season has been getting started, their schedule has gotten much busier, with events like comps, preparing for nationals, pep rallies and basketball games taking up most of their time. This makes bringing home first place a huge accomplishment, as they have been quite busy, yet they still delivered a perfect performance for the judges.
Volokhine says, “It felt so great to win. We have worked so hard on the routines and on making sure our spirit and stage presence was on point.”
Along with stealing wins for their upcoming competitions this cheer season, the varsity cheer team’s goals for this year are to rally school spirit and energy during basketball games, bring home the CIF state championship, and to win the USA nationals. They plan to keep doing their usual strategies and practice formats in order to reach these highly ambitious yet highly possible goals of theirs.
The ANHS girls varsity cheerleading team plans on continuing to promote school spirit through their hard work and energetic cheers, so more first places and wins are definitely in the cards.
Once again, it is a very big accomplishment for them to bring home first place in such an incredibly competitive competition so early on in the season; their hard work and dedication should not be underestimated.
