The Evolution of James Thomas
Small-town beginnings → Navarro standard → Pro Cheer evolution
Age he started cheer: 15
Navarro titles: 2
Grand National score: 99.213
Tour cities performed in: 30
Creative career: Choreographer, photographer, videographer
Pro Cheer team: Dallas Drive
Origin: Mascot → tumbler → champion
Signature identity: Hybrid athlete with performer precision
James Thomas used to flip across a basketball court in a mascot suit.
Before the Netflix cameras, before Daytona, before the Level Up Tour and Dallas Drive, that was his “uniform” — a heavy, oversized costume in a Pennsylvania gym where nobody was quite ready to believe the only boy who wanted to cheer was actually serious and saw it as an opportunity.
That’s the gap he’s crossed.
From mattress back handsprings in his bedroom to a role on a top Netflix series, from D1 track sprints to US National Team gold, from college national titles to a founding roster spot in the Pro Cheer League, Thomas has lived almost every version of what most people dream this sport can be.
And now he’s one of the athletes testing what comes next.
Some athletes are built by structure. Others are built by circumstance.
Thomas is built by both.
Rust Belt Roots, Mattress Flips, and a Mascot Uniform
New Castle, Pennsylvania is not a traditional cheer city. It’s a Rust Belt sports town where the spotlight usually falls on more traditional sports such as football and basketball.
Thomas grew up watching his older brothers become those guys. He didn’t follow them to the three-point line. He watched the tumble-offs during the timeouts.
He didn’t start in a gym. He started in his room, throwing back handsprings on a mattress with his cousin, repeating terrible form, landing on his head, and deciding to try again anyway. Then he took it outside to the front yard to show his dad. Eventually he had enough consistency to tumble across the basketball court in a mascot uniform when the school wasn’t ready to put a boy on the cheer team.
While ultimately dangerous, tumbling and training as the mascot added accidental resistance training for James Thomas:
extra weight, extra heat, restricted vision, restricted airflow, no spring floor.
By the time he finally got to cheer and track started, he had already built his own unique training engine. High jump and hurdles gave him a strong vertical pop and timing. Backyard tumbling gave him confidence and strength. The mascot suit gave him grit and resistance.
What he didn’t have was a clear path.
The Navarro Reset: From Raw Power to Clean Hits
Thomas started his college career at Eastern Michigan, grinding through a schedule that would break plenty of people: 6 a.m. track, class, cheer practice, homework, sleep, then repeat.
He could have stayed there and been “good.” But “good” has never really interested him.
When he watched Navarro compete at NCA, he saw the gold standard — and recognized the gap he needed to cross if he was going to achieve it himself.
He quit D1 track. He left the security of a full program. He moved to Texas by himself because he decided that if he was going to keep cheering, it needed to be at the highest level available.
Navarro stripped his self-taught mechanics down and rebuilt them for the high technique and standardization needed to be a champion in the current age of cheerleading. He went from the boy tumbling in a mascot suit to the athlete who helped Navarro win multiple national titles with a routine that sat at the top of the NCA scoring sheet in Daytona.
He’s honest about what that grind did to his head. He’s also honest about how much mindset matters.
“It’s all a mindset,” he told me. “I had to adapt into a different type of cheerleader — one that focused on the golden standard.”
That standard didn’t just come from hitting skills. It came from handling everything that came with them: the cameras, the expectations, the cancellations, and the losses.
When COVID wiped out a season and a rival took their title, the weight was real. He left Navarro. Moved to Dallas. And started building a life as a choreographer. On paper, that looked like the natural next step for a lot of athletes. For Thomas, it felt empty.
So he went back, not to rewrite his story, but to sharpen it. Thomas walked into Navarro, earned his spot back, and ended the season with a champion winning routine that reflected the athlete he’d grown into, not the one who’d left a year earlier.
Hybrid Built: James Thomas’ Unique Combo of Track Legs, Navarro Timing, USA Standards
Strip away the Netflix storyline and the Instagram followers and what you’re left with is a very unique athlete.
He’s not just a tumbler.
Not just a stunter.
Not just a performer.
He’s all three.
Track gave him the ability to convert horizontal speed into vertical height, the same mechanics he uses in a running double full or to throw a showstopping toss. Cheer forced him to turn raw power into consistent, repeatable, and technical skills. Navarro College and Texas Tech polished his timing and discipline. USA Cheer added another layer of precision.
Each environment demanded something different, and he had to evolve with it:
- Navarro College: “You’re competing and performing at the same time.”
- Texas Tech: routine responsibility, consistency, and the expectation to lead.
- US National Team: ICU rules, international pacing, and zero room for ego in a room filled with the top talent.
“Everybody could do the skills,” he said about that level. “So you had to do the skills and outperform everyone.”
Thomas keeps ending up in those rooms, and that’s not only intentional – it’s earned.
Beyond the Score Sheet: Tours, Cameras, and Performance
Competitive cheer isn’t the only place he’s tested himself.
Tour life, especially through the post-Cheer world, Level Up / House of Cheer style shows, and Dancing With The Stars all asked for something different: no judges, no scores, no “one and done” routine. Just performances, night after night, where the job isn’t to beat anyone. It’s to hold an audience.
That’s the part he lights up about — not because he wants to be famous, but because it matches the version of cheer he always imagined: athletic, theatrical, unapologetically big.
Those experiences sharpened his sense of what this industry has the potential to accomplish outside of the competition realm.
“Cheer can be brought into so many different lights,” he said. “It has infinite possibilities far beyond our normal competition setting. That’s why I trust what this pro league is building — it’s a huge step forward.”He knows what it looks like when the world pays attention.
He also knows it can’t just be one-off moments anymore.
Dallas Drive and the New Job Description
That’s where Dallas Drive comes in.
This isn’t sideline work. It isn’t All Star. It isn’t college. The Pro Cheer League is asking athletes to treat this like a professional sports season.
Dallas Drive is being built intentionally loud: with a strong Texas core, big skills, bigger personalities, and high expectations. Thomas slides into that identity naturally.
“My favorite thing to bring is energy and good vibes,” he said. “If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing your best.”
He’s there to hit skills, sure. But he’s also there to set the emotional temperature of the roster. He talks about practices the way veterans talk about locker rooms.
“We’re four practices in and already so close,” he said. “We’ve set the expectation for how we do things.”
The three words he keeps coming back to are the three words Dallas Drive wants to be known for:
Drive.
Community.
Standard.
That’s a job description, not a slogan.
What He Wants Fans to Bring to the Arena
Professional cheer is about to meet fans who’ve never sat through a Worlds livestream or watched an ICU feed. Their reference points are Cheer on Netflix, a few viral stunt clips, and whatever they think “cheerleading” is from the outside.
Thomas wants the league to control that first impression.
“I want outside viewers to understand the work and passion every athlete puts into our sport,” he said. “Enter with love, respect, and the eagerness to learn.”
It’s not just about being impressed. It’s about being informed.
To him, pro cheer isn’t a gimmick. It’s overdue recognition for athletes who’ve treated this like a career long before the word “professional” showed up on a contract.
For Every Kid Watching From the Sidelines
Thomas knows exactly who’s going to be in those seats.
The kid in the stands who watches the tumbling more than the game.
The boy who gets told to wear the mascot costume instead of the cheer uniform.
The late starter who feels like they’ll always be five years behind.
The athlete from a town nobody associates with cheer.
His message is simple and not performative. It’s how he’s built his life.
“The sky isn’t the limit,” he said. “There’s so much more beyond the stars — keep reaching to the beyond.”
For him, that meant moving across the country alone.
Quitting one sport for another.
Returning to a team where the highs and lows hit equally hard.
Saying yes to the unknown. From cameras, to tours, and now the Pro Cheer League.
The Edge That Makes Him Pro-Ready
Ask Thomas what makes the difference at this level, and he won’t list a skill or benchmark.
He comes back to the mental game. The ability to walk into high-intensity spaces and keep yourself from turning every moment into a crisis.
That doesn’t mean pro cheer isn’t serious. It means if you treat every skill like a catastrophe waiting to happen, you’ll never perform the way you trained. It’s the same logic that helped him navigate cameras in his face at practice, near-miss seasons, and redemption runs without burning out.
That mindset is going to make the difference in a league trying to prove itself week after week.
My Take — Where James Thomas Fits in the Moment Pro Cheer Is Building
Every athlete entering this league brings a different lens to what professional cheer can become. James Thomas brings the one that matters most right now: clarity.
He’s walked through most phases of the sport, and can relate to so many — late start, small market, JUCO grind, D1 pressure, world championship standard, arena tour performance — and he’s grown specifically from each one. That’s why he reads the landscape differently than the others. Athletes like Thomas don’t talk about “being part of something new.” They talk about structure, sustainability, execution, and what it will take for this league to hold weight 30 seasons from now.
What stands out is not the talent — every single athlete in this league is talented. It’s the calibration. He knows how to adapt to rooms that demand different versions of him, and he knows how to bring people with him. Dallas Drive needs that. The league needs that. And honestly, the sport has needed athletes like him for a long time — athletes who understand that visibility comes with responsibility, and that the way you carry yourself off the mat impacts just as much as anything you hit on it.
James Thomas isn’t here to be the face of the league. He’s here to help define its expectations. That’s the difference.
When you strip everything back — the cameras, the titles, the follower count, the noise — what you get is an athlete with a pulse on what’s coming next, not just what’s happening now. He understands the stakes because he’s lived all sides of this industry: the overlooked version, the doubted version, the ready-to-prove-it version, and now he’s testing out the professional version.
He’s not the story of the league.
He’s a reason the league has a real chance to work.
And that matters.
Follow Along This Season
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James Thomas: Personal Instagram | Choreo Instagram
Dallas Drive: Instagram
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