There's a lot to like about Navarro College cheerleading coach Monica Aldama, who helped the Bulldogs gain mainstream acclaim (including a Saturday Night Live spoof) with the Netflix documentary "Cheerleaders . " She is Swift. An accomplished MBA. She's a real mother to her family and a figurative mother to her team—basically, she's the cheerleading world's answer to Coach Taylor of Friday Night Lights .
Although Aldama's students often hear her words of encouragement (and sometimes tough love), you don't need to enroll at Navarro and join the team to reap the benefits. Here are some of Aldama's best quotes to inspire you as you dive into Season 2 of Cheers .
"You keep going until you get it right. And then you keep going until you can't go wrong."
Aldama shared these words of wisdom early in the first season of Cheer , and they perfectly sum up the kind of coach she is. It's not enough to perform a routine or tricky move once or twice. To get the right results on every subsequent try? That 's it for now. While Aldama's words are aimed at the competitive, high-stakes world, they can easily be applied to your own life—whether it's a new hobby, like learning how to cook, or getting into a work rhythm. Really, it’s just the adult version of “practice makes perfect,” and that old adage is as true as ever.
"If you don't fail, you don't grow. You tend to stay complacent."
This is not to say, of course, that Aldama condemns failure on the road to perfection—on the contrary, she considers it necessary. Appearing on "Good Morning America" on January 4, The coach extolled the virtues of screwing up. "If you don't fail, you don't grow," she told Michael Strahan. "You tend to get complacent." The Season 2 trailer mentions rival Trinity Valley's plan to "destroy" Navarro, and it looks like the Bulldogs may soon be at risk of learning from their defeat.
“Anywhere you can find a place where you can talk to them, do it.”
As the team prepares for its first full race of the first season at Daytona, Aldama encourages the cheerleaders to cheer each other on. "Anywhere you can find a place where you can talk to them," she said, "just do it." If you're not familiar with your cheer vocabulary, "mat talk" is when teammates hype each other up during routines — basically, Any words of support they can throw at someone who may be unsure, exhausted, or just plain worthy of a shout-out. Remind them they are doing a great job.
This quote from Aldama is equally instructive to those who have never played any role in the pyramids (i.e., the non-cheering citizens of the world). Who couldn’t use a little more encouragement in their daily lives?
"Who knows what it takes to truly 'succeed'? I'm still working on it and am proud of the positive progress I've made along the way."
The success of Cheers ' Netflix put Navarro's team and its fearless leader on the map, but in a 2020 interview with Insider, Aldama said she's still not sure if (or when) she's achieved it The greatest success. "Who knows what it takes to truly 'succeed'? I'm still working on it and am proud of the positive progress I've made along the way," she said.
"I didn't inherit some great program. It was a lot of blood, sweat and tears."
You should never be afraid of receiving praise for the amazing things you do. Not Aldama! As she told Texas Exes, building her own team in the late '90s was no easy task. Long before Navarro achieved her current accolades, she started as a student in a college weight room (who were strong enough to knock down teammates, she explains) and worked her way up the pyramid. "I didn't inherit some great plan," she said. "It's a lot of blood, sweat and tears."
There's more of Aldama's wisdom in Cheers Season 2, now streaming on Netflix.
