Sachem East cheerleading captures third straight Class A championship
Sachem East wins the Class A titte at the Suffolk cheerleading championships on Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026, in Manorville. Credit: Kelvin Loarca
As the Sachem East girls cheerleading team waited to begin their routine at the county tournament in Eastport-South Manor Junior-Senior High School, they huddled and rocked back and forth to Miley Cyrus’s 2009 hit “The Climb.”
Fittingly, Sachem East had a mountain of expectations to ascend having won the competition the two prior years with state titles in each season to show for it. The very first sentence in the routine’s background song was, “We’re back for another one.” And unlike Cyrus’s famous lyric, “Sometimes you’re gonna have to lose,” that certainly didn’t apply to Sachem East which captured its third consecutive Suffolk Class A title Saturday.
“Once can be luck,” head coach Brianna Aghabekian-Pistolese said.
“Second can be coincidence,” added assistant coach Victoria Aghabekian-Edsell.
“But the third is heart,” Aghabekian-Pistolese said. “This team is all heart. It’s beyond talent, it’s beyond the five or six days of week of practice and competition. It’s heart, and that’s what keeps them going.”
Sachem East took first with a score of 90, finishing just ahead of Sachem North’s 89.3 score.
“Since the beginning, we’ve known this is definitely our hardest routine we’ve put out in the last couple years,” senior main base Olivya Regan said. “Each year gets better and better.”
Alongside Hauppauge, Mount Sinai, Port Jefferson and Ward Melville’s co-ed team, Suffolk’s county champions will compete in the state competitive cheerleading competition in Binghamton’s Visions Veterans Memorial Arena on March 7.
Senior strength in Co-ed
As the winners of Suffolk’s co-ed competition were being read out loud, Ward Melville’s team waited to hear if it had won its third straight county title. As soon as senior base Ian Licavoli learned he’d be returning to the co-ed state championship, he immediately left the celebrations to hug head coach Georgia Curtis and assistant coach Maggie Hurley.
“They are the best people,” Licavoli said. “I look up to them so much … I wouldn’t be who I am, where I am, today without them.”
A team consisting of 12 seniors put on a show in front of a passionate Ward Melville fanbase that began “Let’s go Melville,” chants well before the routine even began. The Patriots’ 89.0 score narrowly beat out Smithtown East (88.5) and Whitman (85.7).
“A big focus for us this year has been cleanliness, taking our routine slow and steady and prioritizing staying clean on the mat,” senior side base Jessica Scardino said. “I think that’s really what our routine looked like today.”
Hauppauge doubles up cheer titles
Months after Hauppauge’s Game Day cheer team won a county title in its debut season, the traditional cheerleading team added another plaque to the collection as it booked a trip back to the state tournament for the first time since 2020.
“To go to states twice in one year, for Game Day and competitive, is school history,” coach Laura Alonzo said.
Hauppauge took first in Class B with a 93.6 score, beating out defending champions Rocky Point (90.9) and Smithtown West (81.85). It came after a bumpy week of practice, but it didn’t prevent the Eagles from flying to a county title.
“It wasn’t our best week, but we knew that we put so much into it during the entire season that nothing was going to change overnight,” sophomore main base Ella Provenzano said. “We knew we had it, and it was just amazing.”
Mount Sinai retakes Class C crown
The 2024-25 season ended with Mount Sinai taking second place behind Shoreham-Wading River, ending the Mustangs search for a seventh state title by just 0.85 points.
A year later, the search is back on.
“Coming off of last year, it felt like such a good feeling because we’re getting what we worked so hard for,” senior back spot Kennedy Kearns said.
Mount Sinai ‘s 19-girl routine left fans chanting, “Mustangs, all together now, we are Mount Sinai!” With a score of 87.6, Mount Sinai topped Shoreham-Wading River (78.3) and Babylon (70.35) to book a trip to Binghamton.
“It felt so good; we worked so hard for this moment,” senior side and main base Jordan Lumley said. “We had a lot of ups and downs this year, but we worked through it and came together as a team. I think that’s what brought us here.”
Another championship for Port Jeff
Port Jefferson, Suffolk’s only Class D school, will return to the state tournament again after posting a score of 64.8. The team lost no points due to violations despite making several late changes to its routine as several cheerleaders were unavailable for Saturday’s competition, leaving Port Jefferson with just eight on the mat.
“We really had to change up our routine, but we put in the hard work and we got here,” senior side base Catherine Poten said.
Michael Sicoli covers high school sports for Newsday. He graduated from Quinnipiac in 2022 and left with a master’s degree in sports journalism in 2023.
