This year, the Navarro Dogs have competition coming from right down the street: a roost called the TVCC Cardinals. 

The second season of Cheer focuses, in part, on Trinity Valley Community College — aka the Cardinals — as they vie for the Daytona crown. They’re briefly mentioned as Navarro’s competitors during Season 1, but, this time, the underdog team is ready for the spotlight. But who are TVCC, and how long has their feud with Navarro been going on?

Ahead is everything you need to know about the cheerleading rivalry that’s rocking eastern Texas. 

The Who

Leading TVCC is head coach Vontae Johnson, who joined the team in the 2017-18 season. As a former Cardinal himself, he’s got something to prove — TVCC has beaten Navarro before, but he’s looking to beat Aldama and her team for the first time in his coaching career. 

“[Monica] doesn’t have to do as much as I’m doing,” Johnson says in Episode 2. “I’m always out and about. Always recruiting. Whereas I don’t ever see her when I go recruit anywhere, but that comes with her reputation. Maybe at the beginning of her tenure, she was probably just like me, but now she’s almost like Nick Saban. He don’t have to recruit. All he has to do is say, ‘Come to school here.’”

Joining Johnson is assistant coach Khris Franklin, who used to be the team’s head coach — even while Johnson was competing as a student. After briefly leaving the team, he’s ready to help nab the team another trophy. 

The What

Like Navarro, TVCC is a public community college. With about 4,245 students, it’s half the size of Navarro. Like Navarro, athletes have two years of eligibility. 

The Where

The two schools are just 37 miles away from each other, about a 45-minute drive. TVCC is located in Athens, while Navarro is in Corsicana. Both are southeast of Dallas, Texas.

The Why

Cheer Season 1 introduces us to TVCC and its rivalry with Navarro. As competition organizer Billy Smith explains in Episode 2, Trinity Valley used to dominate at Daytona, consistently winning national championships throughout the 1990s. But when Aldama began leading the squad in 1995, Navarro began to push back, winning their first-ever national championship five years later. 

Now, the record is fairly evenly stacked — Navarro has won 14 national championships, while TVCC has nabbed 12. And the competition is so fierce that no one even wants to compete against the two schools. “Our division has gotten to the point where we have to beat Navarro, or Navarro has to beat us,” Johnson explains in Episode 4.

The How

This season, Navarro has some competition thanks to Johnson's newest recruits. Angel Rice, one of TVCC’s newest cheerleaders, is featured in the Guinness Book of World Records for most double twists, and new tumbler Dee Joseph can successfully pull off a “quint” — a flip with five turns that’s so difficult it’s illegal to perform at Daytona. And with Navarro left reeling after a turbulent year, the matchup is sure to be as fierce as ever.