CORSICANA, Texas — Monica Aldama grabbed a microphone like a queen of the spectacle. The head coach of Navarro College Cheer, known for her role in the Netflix documentary series “Cheer,” was hyped her team with “matte talk” before bodies began floating through the air.
“Don’t waste a lot of time thinking about what you want to push yourself today,” she told the team. “Actually do it.”
It was early December and from the sidelines, Mrs. Aldama, 49, with crisp blonde highlights and her signature square French tips, watched the cups twirl furiously.
The second season of “Cheer” will premiere on January 12, nearly two years since the first season aired. The Emmy-winning series offered an unvarnished glimpse into competitive cheerleading, captivating audiences with the team’s personal stories, injuries, and journey to the college nationals’ competition.
The Navarro College team, which is one of the top programs in the country, has won 14 Junior College Division National Championships since 2000 and five Grand National titles since 2012. After Season 1, the recognition for the team and Ms. Aldama was beyond cheers. world. The squad appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and “The Today Show” and was parodied on “SNL.” Mrs. Aldama was called “the Bill Belichick of cheerleading”.
“Monica is the most determined coach I’ve ever had the pleasure of filming,” Greg Whiteley, the creator, director and executive producer of “Cheer,” said in an email. “Ten seconds after our first conversation with her, I knew this was someone whose story needed to be told.”
The first season often featured grueling routines in which it sometimes seemed as if the Navarro squad were encouraged to endure their pain. The show also featured a series of jaw-locking moments of physical trauma, including concussions, bruised ribs and a game-changing ankle injury amid a National Championship.
Netflix declined to comment on the injuries in Season 1. Ms. Aldama said the show was edited to highlight falls to highlight the difficulty of the sport.
“I felt like they could probably have edited to show how hard it was without every trap we had,” she said.
The team regularly focuses on safety precautions, including having extra spotters when they learn new routines, Ms Aldama said.
“Safety is number 1,” she said. “We don’t really have many injuries other than your normal wear and tear.” Ms. Aldama added that many of the injuries suffered by athletes, such as ACL tears, resulted from overuse.
“It’s like any other sport, you’re going to get wear and tear because you’ve been physical and probably done some physical activity for most of your life,” she said.
However, research shows that the risk of catastrophic injuries in cheerleading can be very high. According to a 2012 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, between 1982 and 2009, “65 percent of all direct catastrophic injuries to high school-level girls athletes and 70.8 percent college-level” resulted from cheerleading.
Kimberly Archie, the founder of the National Cheer Safety Foundation, a group of concerned parents calling for safe sports practices, said the injuries viewers saw on the series are a major concern and her organization is working on reforms, including educating athletes how to fall.
“One of the things I learned when I started out with injury detection is that we didn’t teach kids what to do when something went wrong, but we know that things do go wrong,” Ms Archie said.
The series also made headlines last September when Jerry Harris, the show’s breakout star, was arrested and charged with child pornography production. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Mr Harris’ case has been set for a status hearing on January 12.
Ms. Aldama said she was devastated by the situation. “I still can barely talk about it without crying,” she said with tears in her eyes. She said she received a letter from Mr. Harris had received after the news got out and spoke to him briefly when one of her athletes spoke to him on the phone one day at the gym. The second season addresses the allegations against Mr. Harris, according to Netflix representatives.
It will also shift the focus to a new group of cheerleaders and follow the lives of a few cast members from Season 1. A new trailer for the series shows how the team is reacting to reports about Mr. Harris, who prepares for the Daytona University Nationals competition and takes on their rivals, Trinity Valley Community College.
“Before I realized how wild things would be, we were already filming,” said Ms. Aldama.
She has become a local celebrity in Corsicana, Texas, where she grew up. The city, about an hour south of Dallas, has a population of about 25,000 and boasts world-famous fruitcake and a four-block cobblestone downtown.
At a dinner of pizza and pepperoni, which Mrs. Aldama ate with a knife and fork, the coach described herself as a very private person. Although she is slowly getting used to the recognition of ‘Cheer’, it was initially shocking.
“I didn’t think many people would watch the documentary,” she said.
She started her own cheer career at Tyler Junior College, and after years of coaching, Ms. Aldama knew all too well the stereotypes associated with cheerleading.
So when the opportunity arose to do “Cheer,” she jumped at it. “I thought no one really understood what we do and how passionate we are,” said Ms. Aldama. “You really do spend hours and hours in the gym.”
Ms. Aldama, like her practices, can be intense, but also energetic and warm.
“Everyone needs something different,” she said. “Some need a lot more than others because they don’t have it.”
For her, it’s just part of the job. The coach is there to talk her cheerleaders through heartbreak or help them find jobs to help them pay what they need.
Her team, for their part, is driven and eager to please.
Morgan Simianer, 24, a former cheerleader for Navarro and a star on the show, said she was determined to test her limits.
“You work so hard for it you don’t want to miss anything,” said Mrs. Simianer. “So I’ve always been through injuries, but I’m also determined to get it right a million times.”
Joshua Stamper, 28, who came to Navarro after 13 years of elite-level cheer in pursuit of college degrees, described Ms. Aldama’s coaching style as “loving yet competitive.”
“In the end she loves every athlete she has, but we still have a goal in mind,” he said.
After the show’s first season, Ms. Aldama was given new opportunities, including a chance to participate in “Dancing With the Stars.” Though unsure at first, she went to Los Angeles and was paired up with professional dancer Val Chmerkovskiy. The “coach is coached” element of the series was intimidating to Ms. Aldama.
“It was scary,” she said, but she made it to week 7 out of 11 weeks.
Ms. Aldama had also always thought about writing a book, and after the series premiered, she was approached by a handful of publishers. When the world shut down and her schedule opened up, it seemed like the ideal time to write one. “Full: Lessons in the Life and Leadership of America’s Favorite Coach,” due to be published Jan. 4, is part self-help, part memoir.
Personally and professionally, Ms. Aldama said she was inspired by Taylor Swift. “I want to be all of that, just like her,” Ms. Aldama said of the pop star. “But in my world, no music.”