HIGH FLYERS!

Junior college cheer squads work their way to Nationals in NBC's new mockumentary comedy Stumble

- BY KATE HAHN

I have put together the most disciplined teams to ever take the mat,” plucky coach Courteney Potter (Jenn Lyon, Justified) declares to the camera in Stumble’s series premiere. On cue, her current squad’s pyramid formation collapses.

Courteney’s fallen much further in the high-stakes world of competitive cheerleading. In the opener, she loses her job at the well-funded Sammy Davis Senior Junior College in Texas after a racy video from a victory party surfaces. Her new gig is 80 miles away—in Oklahoma at Heådtlston State Junior College (the pronunciation is a running joke), where the quirky small-town pride centers on a candy button factory. Courteney, whose mantra is “I can, I will, I must,” assembles a misfit squad, the Buttons. Her goal: victory at the College Nationals in Daytona Beach so that she can be the winningest cheer coach in junior college history, a position for which she’s currently tied.

“When you’re a competitive person, being tied for anything is just a fate worse than death. She’s got to make her life count for something,” says Lyon, who was on her high school JV cheer squad as a “base,” tossing teammates skyward. “It’s fast-paced. She’s driven, hits the ground running and she’s got a team [that woeful collapsing pyramid] by the end of Episode 1.”