Rainier High School boys and girls basketball games will have some additional spirit in 2025-26 as the Rainier School Board voted Dec. 18 to add basketball cheer for next winter. Basketball cheer will be on a one-year basis and will likely come back to the board for an extension after the season.
Tryouts for the 2025-26 season will be held Monday, Feb. 24, 2025, with a clinic to learn the material a week prior on Feb. 17. The tryouts will be for both football and basketball cheer and will be the only tryout of the year. Cheerleaders approved at tryouts may have the choice to participate in football cheer or basketball cheer, or both.
“I’ve been coaching cheer at Rainier for four years now, and there’s been quite a few times over the last few years where people from the community, or even kids or staff at the school, have asked me why we don’t have basketball cheer. I never really had an answer for them,” cheerleading head coach Mariah Frost said. “We’re really excited about it. The girls were really wanting it, and they’ve been pushing me to find out about it for a couple years now.”
RHS has historically been limited to football cheer outside of a couple of one-off years where basketball cheer was offered, but Frost hopes that the basketball cheer will become a fixture in Rainier athletics for years to come.
“The main purpose of cheerleaders at games is to bring in students and community members and lead them in cheering on the team and the game and make the gym louder and more full of spirit,” Frost said. “We want to bring in a really big student section. With more students coming to games, that will most likely mean more families and community members coming to games.”
Rainier basketball cheerleaders will be present at every home game next year. Frost is learning the rules and space limits for basketball cheer.
“There’s different rules as far as when we can cheer or chant. Obviously we can’t be cheering while they’re playing,” she said. “Basketball is a lot different than football in the sense that there’s not as much downtime between plays where we have an opportunity to cheer. We’re figuring out how that’s going to work and we’re going to have to add a lot more cheers and chants that are more relevant to basketball.”
Rainier head boys basketball coach Ben Sheaffer said the addition of basketball cheer is an opportunity to get more students involved in extracurricular activities at RHS.
“We are super excited to be adding basketball cheerleaders for the 25-26 season. We are always looking for ways to enhance the game night experience, and having cheerleaders at our home games will definitely do that,” he said.
Rainier head girls basketball coach Brandon Eygabroad said the basketball programs and athletics in general will benefit greatly from the addition of basketball cheer.
“I think any time you can add more people and more to the environment, especially with cheerleaders whose main purpose is to get the crowd riled up and bring energy and feed that environment, it’s great for us,” he said.
For more information about basketball cheer tryouts, email Frost at frostm@rainier.wednet.edu.