the funny thing about riley's plan of murdering people to make the team better is that, statistically, it worked!
i'm about to say some bullshit that my college professors would be proud of bc it means they successfully drilled into my head that you can't say anything without evidence to back it up, so stay with me here as i analyze some unnecessary data like a true history major:
so we know, first of all, that the team is the worst team ever (if i was funnier i would chicago-style cite this but i am too lazy), and so therefore we can assume that if a character is not explicitly stated to be good, they are therefore bad at cheerleading.
so who is explicitly stated to be good?
riley - she is the captain but we also know she's only captain "just 'cause no one else ran" so that actually means nothing and therefore also implies that she is not a good cheerleader.
cairo - the only reference to her skill is "i am by far not the worst girl on this team" which, when compared to the worst team ever, that does not mean she is actually good at cheering, so we can also assume she's not good. one could argue that her being captain at the end is a sign she's a good cheerleader, but i don't think that's strong enough evidence and her being captain is more likely because of the fact that she is the senior who has been on the team the longest.
chess - okay chess is a tricky one, right? because she was almost an olympian so we can assume she has some level of skill, but also she has that knee injury and also dropped farrah, plus we know about her drug addiction so that probably did not help. i think i'm going to count her as 0.5 because it could go either way here.
reese - again, at some point farrah says "you're just as good as anyone else" which, at first glance, it seems as though that indicates reese is good at cheerleading, but just like cairo above, comparing reese as being just as good as the rest of the cheerleaders on the worst team ever is not actually saying she's a good cheerleader.
kate - now we're getting into the confirmed good cheerleaders! and we can assume kate is Very Good because as much as she was undeniably a pain in the ass, riley thought she was talented enough that she still tried to keep her around at first ("you're so good, you're just so fucking annoying"). therefore, we can count kate as our first actually good cheerleader!
eva - again, another confirmed good cheerleader! highest ranked flyer in the state (is it flier or flyer? 6 years in this fandom and i still don't know and at this point i think it's funnier that i don't know), so we know she's good at cheerleading.
annleigh - okay so annleigh is tricky bc clark tells her "those girls need you, you're the best they have" which you have to take with a grain of salt because his job is Boyfriend so he has to tell her these things, but i think we can assume that while she may be one of the more talented ones, she is still not necessarily Good (again: worst team ever, the standard is low), so i think i am not really going to count her as being good because being the best of the worst does not equal being good.
farrah - the only reference we have here is reese saying "that's not true, i think you're really good" however, similar to the clark problem, reese had an obligation to be nice to this drunk girl throwing up. also, we know from kate that riley was willing to leave annoying girls alive if they were good enough, and clearly she did not do that here, so i think farrah also does not get to be considered a good cheerleader (sorry girl <3).
mattie - our third and final good cheerleader! riley mentions in don't even that mattie's team placed second at UCA worlds last year, and while i do not know what that means, i am going to assume it means that mattie is good at cheerleading, yay!
clark - he's not a cheerleader, i just love my boy and feel bad leaving him out so he gets a mention here <3
okay so that means with our original team configuration of riley, cairo, chess, kate, annleigh, farrah, and mattie, we have 2.5/7 good cheerleaders, or around 36% (2.5/8 or roughly 31% if you count reese) (this number also includes me being generous with chess, because we don't really get a good assessment of what her skill is, just what it probably should be). in contrast, with our final lineup of cairo, reese, kate, eva, annleigh, and mattie, we have 3/6 good cheerleaders, or 50%. therefore, statistically, riley's plan to use murder to make the team better actually did work! thank you for coming to my TED talk!
