The Berkeley High School Cheer team is headed to Las Vegas. On Dec. 5, 2025, the BHS team of eight carefully selected athletes won first place in the JAMZ Cheer and Dance regional championships, cementing their spot at nationals later this month. The team will be competing in the show cheer, non tumbling, and level-one category.
The competition includes a two and a half minute routine split into a cheer section and a music section, where the team showcases both dancing and stunts. This section is competitive and demonstrates team versatility, according to Tiffany Sutherland, BHS head cheer coach.
The path to nationals for the BHS competition cheer team began at tryouts almost 10 months ago in April of 2025. Sutherland explained, “They go through conditioning from April until the end of school year, and that consists of everything between running the bleachers, running the mile, and doing push ups.” She also mentioned how during this period, many of the cheerleaders start learning the basics of what competition cheer really is. This means watching tape, walking though motion drills, and learning about the complex scoring process.
Once the summer came to a close, competition cheer members started up a rigorous schedule balancing sideline cheer — which focuses on supporting other BHS teams at sporting events — competition cheer, and school. All competition cheer team members must also participate in sideline cheer for BHS. This means that yet another thing gets added to the busy schedules of competition cheerleaders.
Sarai Algere, a BHS junior and member of the competition cheer team, notes that they practice or perform at games five to six times a week on a regular basis. “Sometimes we do regular cheer practice from 5:00 to 6:00, and then from 6:00 to 7:30 we’ll do comp practice. Other times, we’ll have a day fully for comp,” Algere explained. In addition to after school practice, the competition cheer team has Saturday practices from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. “Saturday practice is when we learn our full routine, and we really work on the stunts,” said Lilu Good-Martinez, a BHS junior and a member of the competition cheer team. She explained how this differs from weekday practices, usually designated to focus on individual sections of their performance.
While rewarding, BHS competitive cheer is a serious time commitment, forcing students to dedicate hundreds of hours of after-school time to the team in the form of conditioning and practice. “It is a lot,” Good-Martinez said, “Some days I couldn’t go to school because I was so tired.” Alegre builds on this, highlighting the chaos of their pre-competition practice schedule. Still, Alegre mentioned how coaches work to alleviate much of that. “They definitely do make it easy for us,” she said.
During every practice, the team has a discussion about athletes’ needs, while also reiterating the importance of the commitment they made when joining the competition cheer team. Even with the support of teammates and coaches, competition cheerleaders often quit due to the massive workload and strenuous pressure placed on the student athletes in these roles.
“We never end up with the exact team that we started with,” Sutherland explained. This year three cheerleaders quit before regionals, forcing the team to quickly adjust their routine to account for the personnel change. “One of my friends quit because her grades were dropping, she devoted almost all her free time to cheer,” Good-Martinez explained.
Despite the exhaustion and constant adjustments, the remaining eight athletes continue to push forward with their eyes set on nationals in Las Vegas. As nationals approach, the BHS competition cheer team carries not only a demanding routine, but the weight of the commitment and resilience it took to get there. Beneath the surface of just two and a half minutes of performance time is countless months of discipline, sacrifice, and teamwork.