Princess Celestia has told Twilight of her intent to start an interscholastic buckball league between the various schools in Equestria, with the inaugural match set to be played between her school and Twilight's in two weeks. Twilight has Pinkie, Fluttershy, and Snails help train the Friendship School's team. Rainbow Dash arrives, ready to help, but Twilight reveals that she wants Rainbow to instead help train a school cheering squad instead, much to Rainbow's resentment. Snips explains the importance of a cheer squad, not only to keep the crowd excited but also a way to sell merchandise.
Rainbow reluctantly goes to meet with the potential squad members, which include Shimmy Shake and Lighthoof, two students who have some experience in cheerleading, as well as Yona, Ocellus, and Smolder. Rainbow remains distracted by the actual buckball practice, and the assembled group attempt to find some type of routine under Snips' watch. However, there's too many problems: Yona's hoof-beating unbalances Shimmy Shake and Lighthoof's routine, Ocellus is too soft-spoken to be heard, and Smolder, though able to breathe smoke, has little interest. Further, Snips' idea for outfits, by loading their outputs with flags and buttons, make it difficult to cheer. The students beg Rainbow to seek the help of her friends to figure out how to help them practice.
Rainbow goes around Ponyville to ask for help, and returns the next day with a bunch of cheerleading equipment and outfits for the crew, but leaves them there for the students to figure out, while she goes to watch the buckball practice. While the equipment helps them to coordinate a bit more, the squad is still stumbling around each other, and they are to be ready to show Pinkie and Fluttershy their cheering in a few days. With practice over, the other students leave, but Smolder stays behind to chew out Rainbow Dash for being a terrible coach because she doesn't care about cheerleading when others do.
Hurt, Rainbow decides to fix things, and gets Snips' help to round up the students to practice more, promising to be more helpful. As they start their practice, Rainbow sees their faults and finds ways to fix things, such as making sure Yona's stomping is done on time with the routine, provide Ocellus with a megaphone to be heard, and helping Smolder coordinate her flying and smoke-breathing. By the time of the first game, they have nailed down the routine, and provide a strong school spirit, despite the Friendship School losing to Celestia's team.
Twilight congratulates Rainbow and the students on a great job in cheerleading for the game. Rainbow realizes that Twilight had purposely set her up to be the cheerleading coach as a means to teach her a lesson that she should not knock something she may not like until she tries it.
Tropes:
- An Aesop: Even when you don't care about something, you should still care about your friends that do and can enjoy working with them on it.
- Bait-and-Switch: One of the people Rainbow Dash sees is Zecora to get help with Ocellus' rhyming... only to reveal Zecora wasn't very helpful and Rainbow Dash just gets a rhyming dictionary from the library.
- Call-Back:
- Buckball appears again, and Snips is still trying to merchandise the sport (mentioning the visit to the Buckball Hall of Fame in "Common Ground" as his inspiration).
- The wing spell from all the way back in Season 1's "Sonic Rainboom" appears again to enable a unicorn competitor to play the defense position, which normally requires a pegasus. This time it is cast by Celestia.
- The Cameo:
- Rarity, Applejack, Big Macintosh and Zecora are seen during the Montage of Rainbow Dash scavenging random objects for the cheer squad.
- Starlight Glimmer, Gallus and Sandbar are seen in the audience for the big game.
- Continuity Nod: Rainbow Dash's "20% cooler" line is referenced again, this time by Smolder.
- Faint in Shock: Fluttershy faints when Twilight tells her that she will coach a Buckball team. Pinkie almost immediately wakes her up by throwing water on her face.
- Gale-Force Sound: Celestia breaks out the Royal Canterlot Voice when cheering for her school's team during the big game, and everypony around her is almost literally blown away by it.
- Handshake Substitute: Twilight and Celestia of all ponies share a hoof-bump at the end of the episode.
- Hidden Depths: Who knew that Celestia had an interest in sports? Even lampshaded in the episode.
- Implausible Deniability: Invoked by Twilight when Rainbow figures out what she did.Rainbow Dash: Wait a second. Was this one of those things where you knew the lesson I needed to learn before I learnt it?
Twilight Sparkle: You mean like how you don't have to care about a thing other ponies like as long as you care about the ponies who like it? Nope. Don't know what you're talking about. - Innocently Insensitive: After the School of Friendship team loses by a single point, Rainbow rushes past them, telling the cheer squad that they did great (and paying the team no attention at all).
- It's All About Me:
- Snips' "vested interest" in the cheer squad revolves around the increase of Buckball interest they could produce, allowing him to sell more merchandise.
- Rainbow Dash thinks that, just because she doesn't think cheering is important, nopony else does either.
- Jerkass Realization: Rainbow Dash at first blows off the cheer squad, but then gets a realization from Smolder calling her out, that just because she doesn't like cheering, doesn't mean others don't. She comes around.
- Levitating Lotus Position: Snails uses telekinesis on himself to float while he's blindfolded and doing a (close-approximation-of-because-pony-legs) Lotus Position while teaching the buckball players (and later, the cheerleading squad) how to empty their minds.
- Literal-Minded: When Snails tells the squad to "be the cheer squad", Smolder points out that they are the cheer squad.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": Yona, Ocellus, Smolder, Shimmy Shake and Lighthoof just before the party cannon fires in their direction.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After Smolder calls out Rainbow for not caring about the cheer squad, Rainbow realizes how poorly she neglected them, and sets out to make things right.
- My God, You Are Serious!: Rainbow invokes this twice, laughing out loud when Twilight says that cheer squad is important, and again when Pinkie says she can't wait to see them in action. Both times she quickly realizes they're serious.
- Never My Fault: After their disastrous first run, the cheer squad call out Rainbow for not doing anything to help them. Rainbow quickly retorts that it's not her fault they didn't know what to do.
- Power Nullifier: The offensive Unicorn from Princess Celestia's school is wearing a magic-damping ring.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Rainbow Dash ditches the cheer squad the first chance she gets, preferring to watch the Buckball team practice.
- Series Continuity Error: The episode's premise posits that Rainbow Dash has no respect, knowledge, or interest in cheering. The problem is that Rainbow Dash has demonstrated all of these things in past episodes; in "Sonic Rainboom" she coached Fluttershy on how to cheer for her properly; in "Games Ponies Play" she took part in an organized cheer demonstration; and in "Parental Glideance" we find out her parents spent years enthusiastically cheering for her and she joins them in cheering for Scootaloo in the episode's ends.
- Shockwave Stomp: What Yona's enthusiastic jumping and dancing amount to: she sends tremors through the floor that make her cheerleading teammates stumble during their routine.
- Shrinking Violet: Ocellus is nervous about performing in the squad, to the point where she can barely raise her voice above a whisper. Rainbow solves this problem by giving her a megaphone.
- Smoke Screen: Smolder accidentally creates one during practice, which is later incorporated into the routine.
- So Proud of You: Rainbow Dash says this to the cheer squad after her successful coaching.
- Suddenly Voiced: The blond maned, cream coated Friendship student, who was always a background character, speaks for the first time in this episode.
- Title Drop: Rainbow Dash's cheer squad shout out the episode's title during their halftime routine.
- Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Smolder is one of the cheerleaders. She pretends to be unenthusiastic about it but in her blow-up at Rainbow Dash says she was excited to be on the squad, especially with Rainbow coaching.
- Trickster Mentor: Twilight knew Rainbow Dash didn't care about cheer squad but assigned her to coach it because she wanted her to learn the aesop.
- What the Hell, Hero?: After their first attempt at a routine fails, the cheer squad call out Rainbow Dash for not doing anything to coach them. Smolder in particular lets her have it, admitting that she was excited to have Rainbow as a coach, believing she could make it fun, and disappointed that she didn't because cheerleading is something that Rainbow Dash doesn't care about.
