2017 Malta Cheerleaders

What would prep sports be without a team of cheerleaders to urge the crowd to cheer on the home team?

The Malta Cheerleaders took their talents to CheerFest last spring and came back with hardware in Coach Timberlee Pankratz’s first season, which can confirm that this group means business.

Though it isn’t basketball season, Pankratz and the Malta Cheerleaders will be present at each of Malta’s home games for football and select volleyball games this fall.

The team will be without a few members from last year’s runner up team, losing Daphne Johnson, DeeDee Johannesen and Kristi Granlund to graduation. During the fall the team will also be missing a few members to other fall sports including TaChante Cole to cross country and Macy Knudsen to volleyball.

“They all had passion,” Coach Pankratz said of her graduated seniors. “Their passion was really great for our team last year.”

The senior class often comes together to help lead the younger cheerleaders, allowing the team the ability not to rely on a team captain.

“We don’t usually have a captain but all of the seniors band together and go to help out in any way that they can and be the leaders,” Coach Pankratz said.

The team’s seniors are Billie Orahood, Devyn Salsbery, Shelby Farrell and Adessa Judd.

Orahood is in her fourth season as a cheerleader and though normally quiet, she exudes passion while leading cheers.

“Like our seniors last year, she had a lot of passion for cheer and she has shown really good leadership over the new ones with teaching the cheers and dances,” Coach Pankratz said. “She is humble about being a senior. The pride that she takes in being a senior is to help out others rather than ‘look at me’.”

Judd has brought a lot of experience in tumbling to the team over the past couple of years.

“She is our main tumbling girl,” Pankratz said. “It gives a good visual to the crowd.”

Salsbery is one of the team’s flyers.

“She gets thrown in the air during our stunting,” Coach Pankratz said with a smile.

Coach Pankratz mentioned that there will be no stunt routines during the fall season but there may be minor stunts.

“For football season, it’s mainly to get our feet wet and learn all of the different cheers and dances and perfect those,” Coach Pankratz said. “For basketball, once we have those down, we go into stunting and performing.”

The junior class consists of Chayana Stolem and Shelby Jones. The sophomore class is Camryn Messerly, Bonnie Jones and Jordan Markuson. The freshman class consists of Bethany Holmes and Turk Salsbery.

All of the above will cheer during football and volleyball games due to the fact that there is only a varsity team in the fall and no JV team.

Though CheerFest isn’t until next spring, the cheerleaders are already looking forward to competing again and hopefully bringing back more hardware.

“I think that they are pretty excited for CheerFest,” Coach Pankratz said. “We are looking to add a lot of new dynamics and new stunts and dances to the performance.”