Oakton Cheerleaders review Netflix’ Cheer

Get ready to have what you think about cheerleading challenged. Netflix’s 6 part docuseries Cheer follows the Navarro College cheer team as they practice and prepare for the biggest competition of the season at Daytona Beach, Florida. The pressure is on as they have won the NCA National championship 13 times and the grand national championship 5 times before, according to the college’s website. Navarro College is a two-year college in the small town of Corsicana, Texas which is about 50 miles south from Dallas. The team is coached by Monica Aldama, who is firm, no-nonsense, passionate, and always in great boots. She uses her skills from business school to run the team. She expects excellence and has helped make it into one of the best cheer programs in the country. She also helps and cares for the athletes and wants to help prepare them for their future. In the series, we learn about cheerleader’s backstories. They all have interesting and different personalities which make the show very fun to watch. Cheer shows how challenging and impressive competitive cheer is. You see the cheerleaders flipping each other in the air and catching them and doing very grand gymnastics. You see how much and how hard they practice and watch them get and recover from injuries.

Addy Becker, a junior at Oakton, in addition to cheering at Oakton, shes been doing competitive cheer since 3rd grade. She said that watching cheer made her proud because the sport is getting acknowledgment. “People are finally realizing are the hard work cheerleaders do, not just throwing poms poms around the sidelines of football games.” Addy liked cheerleader Jeremiah Harris because of his hard work attitude and how he always motivates his teammates. She said anyone can watch the show because of the themes of hard work, commitment, diligence, and community throughout.

Lily Darwaza(11) is a cheerleader at Oakton who has been cheering competitively for about 6 years. Darwaza enjoyed the show and liked to see how all-star cheer and college cheer differentiate. Her favorite person on the show was cheerleader Morgan Simianer because of her positivity which Darwaza said was important in the world of cheer.

Photo courtesy of CNN