The Juanita cheerleading team recently qualified for the WIAA State Cheerleading Championship.

“It’s intense,” said Juanita assistant coach Andrea Snyder of the state competition. “It’s exciting. Everybody that’s there has worked extremely hard to get there.”

The Rebels qualified for state at a Jan. 10 competition at Peninsula High School when they earned a score of 213.5. The state meet was at the Comcast Arena in Everett Jan. 24 (results were not available by deadline, check KirklandReporter.com for results).

“We were very happy with that score,” Snyder said. “It was even higher than we anticipated.”

Teams must earn a score of 195 or higher at any number of qualifying events through the season.

Because of the inclement weather in December, the team was only able to compete at two events and the Peninsula competition was the team’s last chance to qualify for state.

“There was a lot of pressure on this last competition because there wasn’t much else to go to after that,” Snyder said. “It was really important for us to go to state. That was our goal this season.”

Juanita is competing in the non-tumbling category at the state meet this season. There are 51 teams in the state competition as a whole and eight other teams are in the non-tumbling category (Hudson’s Bay, Black Hills, Granite Falls, North Central, Kentwood Green, Tenino, Meridian and Steilacoom).

The category limits teams to 20 participants. Tumbling is defined as feet over head rotation. Routines for all categories are a maximum of two and a half minutes long.

Juanita has 18 members and Snyder said most of the team’s routine is built around building and stunting since it is competing in the non-tumbling category. She said the Rebels have a few strong tumblers, but judges like to see full-team tumbling and they just don’t have the right personnel to do that.