The Cougar Dome dims as a spotlight shines on a rolled-out tumbling mat. The music booms, sending the crowd into a frenzied applause. White Bows bounce with every sharp motion while purple pompoms reflect the light. In just seconds, student-athletes are lifted into the air, with only faith, skill, and fellow teammates upholding them. This unbreakable determination is what defines what it means to be a Rancho Cucamonga High School cheerleader.
The 2025-2026 cheer team is composed of Cougar athletes who have put in work, time, effort, sweat, and tears, but aren’t always recognized when they’re on the sidelines. With cheers and stunts often overlooked by those they work to inspire, it’s time to take a deep dive into the people who give Rancho its Cougar pride.
Ms. Alexis Duncan, the new head coach of the team and a former RCHS student herself, has taken her new position with pride. Duncan also teaches earth and space science.
“I really love coaching cheer, and I have to shout out my assistant coaches, Bri and Olivia,” Duncan said.
Being an athlete herself, she knows how much cheer demands physically, and her comments put an end to the “is cheer an actual sport” debate.
“People 100% underestimate how hard cheerleading is,” Duncan said. “They do a lot of conditioning just like the other sports; it’s a lot of strength, acrobatics, gymnastics, and on top of that, they’re doing dance.”
Lifting and throwing a person in the air is not light work. Duncan said the stunts are difficult, even with most people having previous experience in gymnastics.
Junior Aleeyah Avila, even with three years of previous cheerleading experience, agreed with Duncan.
“I feel like [people] think we’re just tossing people in the air and it’s no big deal, but a lot comes with it,” Avila said.
Avila has been a member of RCHS Cheer since her freshman year, where she started on JV and worked her way up to her current position on the varsity team.
Along with dedicating herself to cheer mentally and physically, she still focuses on her studies and has a 4.0 GPA. The rest of the Cougars also carry the weight of keeping up with their school work on top of the demands of cheerleading.
Avila was previously involved in ASB, as are some cheerleaders currently, which also takes up a great amount of their time.
“Coach Duncan is a teacher here, so she is very understanding of us prioritizing our education,” Avila said. “It is difficult, however, with our practices ending at 5:30 p.m. every day, and then by the time you get home, you have to fight the procrastination urges to keep up with work.”
Most of the cheerleaders, however, have found methods to efficiently balance school with their dedication to cheer.
“I’ve learned that doing assignments as soon as possible helps me,” junior Aiyre Binns said. “Like if we have to be at an away game, I’ll do my homework on the bus; if not, then in class.”
Binns wasn’t in cheerleading before her time on the RCHS varsity team, but she spent her whole life in dance and gymnastics. She said her skills with that really helped in perfecting her role on the team.
These cheerleaders have so much going on both in school and out of school, yet still show up for RCHS and give students the spirit that evokes Cougar pride through and through.
According to both Avila and Binns, the team has greatly improved under Duncan’s coaching.
“We’re more together as a team, more friendships, less drama,” Binns said. “More unified, and the communication within ourselves is so much better. That makes things like throwing, tumbling, and stunts run much smoother.”
Aliva agreed with this, adding that it’s something that they’ve been working on, and now that it’s perfected, the environment is more peaceful.
As a whole, the team has improved for the better, which reflects well on the school and will continue to inspire future classes of Cougars.
