Her obsessive goal of training an elite small-town cheer team into national champions has made Monica Aldama one of the most famous cheer coaches in the country.
But Ms. Aldama, who captivated viewers in the popular Netflix documentary series “Cheer” before being sued by a former student, will no longer be the head coach at Navarro College. The community college in Texas announced her departure from her cheerleading show on Thursday after nearly three decades of coaching.
“There is no greater figure in the sport of cheer than Monica Aldama,” said Michael Landers, the college’s executive director of student services and athletics. “He is an icon in the sport and built our program from the ground up with class, grace and championship.”
A former cheerleader herself, Ms. Aldama was hired to teach math and sponsor the cheerleading program at the college in the small town of Corsicana. Over the next few years, she built it into a championship winner, which attracted aspiring competitive cheerleading practitioners, who often perform grueling physical acrobatics and gymnastics.
Under her leadership, the team won 17 national titles at annual collegiate competitions in Daytona Beach, Florida, hosted by the National Cheerleading Association.
The niche world of Navarro Cheer and head coaching entered the mainstream in the 2020 Netflix series “Cheer,” after a documentary crew followed the team as it prepared for a competition. The series gave audiences an intimate front-row seat to the trials of the team’s cheerleaders as they endured Ms. Aldama’s rigorous training and faced more personal problems.
Ms. Aldama’s no-nonsense coaching style and demand for discipline left some viewers inspired. Others, however, were upset by her determination to push Navarro’s cheerleaders to win the title.
The show’s success made stars out of Ms. Aldama, who her students called “The Queen,” and her cheerleaders, leading to talk show appearances, a spoof on “Saturday Night Live” and even a live tour. Ms. Aldama joined the ranks of reality TV royalty as a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars” and released a book in 2022.
But the team has also been mired in a number of controversies. A fan-favorite cheerleader, Jerry Harris, has been accused of using his status to solicit sexual content from teenage boys. Mr. Harris was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2022 after pleading guilty to two counts of sex crimes involving minors. A second season of the show, two years after the first, showed Ms. Aldama and other team members struggling with this revelation.
Then a former cheerleader on the team alleged in a civil lawsuit filed in April that Ms. Aldama and college staff had he silenced her after she accused another member of the group of sexually assaulting her on campus.
Ms Aldama called the allegations “provably false”. in a statement on Instagram, and said she had been temporarily suspended from cheerleading by her national cheerleading body, USA Cheer, as it investigated the complaint. Navarro College also denied any wrongdoing.
She has since returned to coaching and no longer appears on USA Cheer’s suspension list. Ms. Aldama will retire after completing the fall 2023 semester, the release said.