There's A New Head Coach On Cheer And He Isn't Monica's Favorite
He means business.
After Cheer Season 1 premiered in early 2020, fans couldn’t get enough of Navarro College and their head cheerleading coach, Monica Aldama. The junior college in Corsicana, Texas, dominated the spotlight of the Netflix docuseries’ first season. Now, Cheer is back for a Season 2, and this time, the show is featuring an additional junior college cheer team — and another head coach. Vontae Johnson is the head coach at Navarro’s rival school, Trinity Valley Community College, and he’s serious about pushing his cheer team to win.
Aldama became one of the many breakout stars of Cheer Season 1, but Cheer Season 2 shifts some of the focus to Johnson, who Aldama says is not her favorite person. While Navarro won the 2019 NCA College National competition, Trinity Valley came in second. So when Cheer Season 2 picks up, Vontae is determined to steal the national championship from Navarro, creating an intense rivalry between the two schools. “I’m here to destroy you,” Vontae says about Monica in Cheer Season 2, Episode 1. “I’m not here to be your best friend.”
Johnson and his Trinity Valley cheer team almost became the stars of Cheer Season 1. Originally, the producers wanted to follow Trinity throughout Season 1, but Johnson turned them down. “They didn’t want cameras on campus,” Cheer creator Greg Whiteley told Vanity Fair.
But Johnson reconsidered for Season 2 and agreed to allow cameras to capture his team’s journey. “Once they saw where our heart was and the story that we were trying to tell, then they were open to it,” Whiteley said. “There was no resistance when we went [back].”
In Season 2 of Cheer, Johnson is tough on his team, in part because he’s determined to have them succeed in ways that he didn’t himself. Originally from Ocala, Florida, Johnson was a talented young athlete who joined the Trinity Valley cheer team in Athens, Texas, as a student himself. During Johnson’s time on the team, they never won the national championship — in fact, Johnson dropped a stunt during his team’s performance at Daytona, an anecdote he shares with his team now to help motivate them to do better. Johnson went on to compete for the Team USA cheerleading squad, and in 2017 he became Trinity Valley’s head coach. Now he’s taking everything he’s learned and worked for and channeling it toward a big win for TVCC.
Cheer Season 2 is on Netflix now.
