I watched Cheer for the first time when it launched on Netflix in January 2020 and then watched it again just as the world was descending into it’s first lockdown. Cheer offers a behind the scenes look at seven-time National Cheer Champions, Navarro Cheer. Navarro Cheer are based out of Navarro College in Corsicana, a tiny town in Texas. The series sees them preparing for the annual, National Collegiate Cheerleading Competition at Daytona Beach, Florida. Location and the importance of place is really highlighted in the show and these small corners of America now have a new, almost mythical significance to people, outside of the cheerleading community, following the popularity of the documentary.
Over six episodes, the documentary introduces a cast of characters who make up the Navarro Cheer team. We meet the fearless ‘Top Girl’, Morgan, the performance king, La’Darius, the ‘cheer-lebrity’, Gabi Butler (who is only ever referred to by her full name, even by her own family) and of course, the living boot-wearing legend, Monica. Monica is a QUEEN, she is meticulous, she is passionate, she is hard as fucking nails. She is everything a mother should be and for many of these young people she is the first adult to set boundaries and expectations for them. She is nurturing and fair and she not only trains champions, she gives these young people skills that they can carry forward into any aspect of their lives. She is a living figure of inspiration and she would do anything for ‘her kids’.
Despite the Navarro Cheer team being made up of thirty-eight cheerleaders, only twenty of them can ‘make mat’. Being on mat means that you will be performing at Daytona but it is never set in stone. Injury, stamina, attitude; all of these things can determine if you will make mat and more importantly, if you will stay there. This is the cornerstone of much of the drama in the series. As Monica watches the routine take shape, changes are made with the good of the team always being the justification. It is interesting to watch individual team members reconcile with hard decisions and wrestle with their egos, knowing that they are one tiny piece of the team’s greater success.
In the first episode Billy Smith, a former cheerleader and regular talking head in the series, talks about the bond of trust that is formed between cheerleaders. He explains what happens psychologically when you are literally throwing and catching your teammates and how this physical act builds a bond of trust and protection that can perhaps only be compared to the bond of circus performers or acrobats or anyone else who regularly trusts another human being to launch them into the stratosphere and still be there when they come back down. He goes on to say that when you become that close, you become a family but warns that if the chemistry, trust and bond isn’t there, that’s when things fall apart.
A key example of this breakdown in trust in the series is the relationship between La’Darius and Allie. Due to changes on mat, they end up paired for a stunt sequence in the Daytona routine. After several frustrating rehearsals and a car crash show-off performance where La’Darius leaves Allie to pick herself up off the floor, the inner tensions and resentments between the two are revealed. Allie comes from a stable, well-off background, supported by both her parents and has had every opportunity provided for her, while La’Darius comes from a broken family and is a survivor of abuse. Allie is a sensitive soul and La’Darius has no time for the tears of someone who, in his opinion, has nothing to cry about. It is a great example of how the show delves into the emotional history of the cheerleaders and how the physical body can be held back by mental and emotional walls.
Perhaps even more important to the team’s success than who is on mat, is what is being said off the mat. I’m talking about mat talk! Mat talk is what you need to hear when your body feels like it is about to give up, when you can’t catch your breath and the sweat is running off you in rivulets. Mat talk is when other members of the team are shouting and cheering from the sidelines to encourage those on the mat to keep going. ‘You’ve got it, keep going, we’re not tired,’ ‘Get her up, get her up,’ ‘You’re stunning, you’re beautiful, you got it’- that is all mat talk. I can imagine when you’re at breaking point in a routine it is exactly what you need to hear.
One breaking point that stands out in the show is Gabi Butler in the midst of the teams first full-out rehearsal. Gabi Butler is the team’s ‘cheer-lebrity’ and has been a professional cheerleader since she was eight years old. In the show we see her constantly juggling competing priorities with Navarro, her career and her parents. And her parents are a LOT. Her dad walks around constantly looking for ways that Gabi can make him his next dollar and thinking words like ‘opportunity’ will disguise the fact he has entirely monetised his daughter’s life. Gabi’s mum is literally OBSESSED with her. In Episode 3 you see her flicking through a cheerleading magazine, pointing out every photo of Gabi like she is one of the little girls who look up to her as an idol.
Gabi carries a lot of weight on her young shoulders, pressure from all angles and a constant reminder that she has to keep working herself to the bone because, ‘She is Gabi Butler and that is just who she is’. This all comes to a head in the first full-out. Gabi runs out of stamina mid-routine and says she feels like she just wants to give up, she is reminded that she doesn’t give up because ‘She is Gabi Butler’. It is supposed to be encouraging but with the context of her family and her ever growing list of responsibilities, it is a moment that makes you wince.
With the timeline of the show revolving around the days out from Daytona, eventually the fateful day arrives and the Navarro Cheer team is off on what Monica explicitly calls a business trip. The Daytona experience is intense, after all a whole season of work comes down to this one performance. The mysticism of Daytona is intensified by the fact we see the competition entirely through footage taken by the attendees. There is a moment maybe thirty minutes before they go on stage where every stunt they practice fails, you can see them getting frustrated and it is like a final dress rehearsal, where it almost has to go wrong, so that you know it will go right when it matters.
I am obsessed with that moment before a performance, when you stand on the precipice, knowing that as soon as you hit the stage you’re on that rollercoaster and you can’t turn back until it is over. For the Navarro Cheerleaders this is the moment they have spent hundreds of hours training for. The documentary crew follow the friends and family of the team watching from all over the country, and I can’t get through the final episode at Daytona without crying at what a poignant, cathartic moment it is for these young athletes and the whole community that surrounds them.
My Cheer obsessions:
The Kit
The Navarro uniform is stunning. Bejewelled, cropped yet still sporty, and coming in two colours, black or red. The uniform even feeds into the superstitious nature of the team, with the uniform they ‘hit’ in the most, in practice, being the one they wear to Daytona. As well as showcasing the sheer athleticism of the cheerleaders, a massive part of the competition is their appearance. Cue huge hair and phrases like ‘the higher the hair, the closer to God.’ The cheerleaders who we are used to seeing bare-faced with sloppy ponytails in practice, look like living dolls on stage with full-faces of make-up and gigantic bows in their hair.
Coming back to those sloppy ponytails, I am obsessed with the fact they do these routines, with flips, lifts, spotting etc. all with their hair down! How?! I can’t get through a two minute commercial routine, without my hair sticking at some point to my sweaty face. What is their secret?
The Work Ethic
Monica doesn’t believe in practicing to get it right. She believes in practicing it so many times you can’t get it wrong. I *clap* AM *clap* OBSESSED WITH THIS! Yes, Monica! Yes, Navarro! So many performers talk about this. When you are doing something that is so physical, so meticulous, so fundamentally reliant on a series of things going right, you don’t have time to think. That routine needs to be in your body to the point that it is automatic muscle memory, even if you are strung out, exhausted or delusional, you could do that routine.
This feeds in to how Monica drills them for stamina too, making them throw their tricks and tumbling at the end of a full-out when they are physically at breaking point. It is brutal but it is an effective way to show mind over matter and that even when it feels like you have nothing left to give, when pushed, there is a reserve.
The Routine
The fact that they work for an entire season on ONE, 2 minute and 15 second routine. The dedication, the details, the polish. OBSESSED!
The Top Girl
When Sherbs gets injured at the end of Episode 3, it was a moment that literally made my jaw drop to the floor. The way she flies through the air totally trusting that someone will be there… until they’re not. It is one of those moments where you instantly wish you could rewind time and go back to just a couple of seconds before. Sherbs is told she’ll be out for 8-10 weeks and is essentially written off the team for the rest of the season. The fear in air after the accident is palpable and at that moment the trust is gone. (Also just from a documentary making point of view, they put that moment right in the middle of the series, so that the second half of the story arc is all about the comeback and the step-up of the underdogs.)
The Bullet
Morgan saying with all sincerity that she would take a bullet for Monica.
The Injuries
The number and frequency of injuries on the team. In initial rehearsals for the pyramid, three of the top girls end up with concussions and are out for three days within one rehearsal. The team are constantly strapping up wrists, fingers and ankles or sitting in ice baths then carrying on. They get used to pushing through pain for the good of their role on the team and this resilience is addictive (although sometimes toe-curling) to watch.
The Superstitions
There are SO MANY superstitions and rituals in the lead up to Daytona. The team have a specific order of handshakes, they walk the same number of steps outside in the sun as they will in Daytona and they do a certain number of full-outs. For that year the number was 41, 41 because if you flip the numbers it is 14, and it is their 14th title try at the National Collegiate Cheerleading Championships. It sounds intense but I guess when you are throwing people’s bodies into the air at 100mph, watching them twist, flip and tuck before catching them, knowing you are the only thing between them and the floor, you would be superstitious!
The Distraction
Monica asking them to ‘work on their stunts’ whenever she needs a minute to sort out an individual crisis. It’s the cheer equivalent of your teacher asking you to work with the person sitting next to you for five minutes while they take another student outside.
The Shark Bait Chant
‘DAWGS SNIFF WHERE? PEE YEW. YEAH! PERIOD. TASTES LIKE CHICKEN! SHARK BAIT OOH HA HA. WELCOME TO THE RING OF FIRE, THE RING OF FIRE!’ That is all.
The Song
The Navarro Cheer song is two minutes of sassy serotonin and just hearing, ‘It’s a dawg eat dawg world’ makes me feel pumped. You can listen to the track on Spotify here and the Navarro Cheer team have a whole playlist of songs they use in practice to keep them motivated, many of which kept me moving while writing this post!
Every time I re-watch the series I can’t help but search the cast on Instagram, I absolutely eat up the sun-soaked, glittery images and gravity defying tricks they post. When no amount of re-watching, Instagram scrolling and deep-dive googling could quell the obsession, my housemate and I decided to learn the entire Navarro Cheer routine. We spent weeks learning the different sections, mat talked each other, rehearsed until we were drenched in sweat and drilled the routine until it was spotless, just for a taste of the Navarro experience.
Check out the original routine and our take below:
Cheer is available to watch on Netflix and rumour has it Season 2 is in the works!
*For anyone who has already watched the show, you may have noticed I have omitted a key cast member, Jerry Harris. Due to current allegations and an on going investigation I have not featured Jerry in this post.
Midnight Culture 