There isn’t a main character in America’s Sweethearts—the wildly popular Netflix docuseries that chronicles the highs, heartbreak, and hip pain of the beloved Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders—but if there were, it would be Reece Weaver.
A sublimely sweet studio talent who performed with the University of Alabama dance team before packing it up for Dallas, Weaver first sashayed her way into America’s hearts in the show’s inaugural season, when she wowed director and choreographer Kelli Finglass and Judy Trammell with her precision and poise, then practically walked onto the team with ease.
Her obvious kindness; tried and true talent; and deep, unwavering faith—all of which comprised a huge portion of the show’s debut installment—made her an instant and continued favorite among fans; even now, she boasts 1.1M followers on Instagram, while most of her colleagues hover in the 250k–350K range.
But she was never going to be around forever. So long as they’re healthy enough to dance and can successfully re-audition year after year, most women retire from the team after five seasons, as they look to start more stable lives with their partners or move on to a more lucrative career (despite the Cowboys’ billion-dollar valuation, their prestige cheer squad is paid pennies, relatively speaking).
Weaver, however, will retire in three.
In an interview around the release of the show’s third season, America’s favorite sweetheart revealed to Sports Illustrated all that went into her bombshell decision to leave the iconic franchise ahead of schedule, as well as her plans for her life after the DCC.
The Cowboys’ penultimate contest of the 2025-26 campaign was always going to be a tear-filled affair; it was the team’s final home game, which meant certain cheerleading veterans would be knowingly taking the field for the last time. What wasn’t clear, however, was whether Weaver would be counting herself among them.
“I would say I was still thinking about it, but on the other hand, I treated it like it was my last,” she said, asked whether she knew at the time that it would be her final game. “I didn't really know going into it that it was going to be, but I just wanted to take that game specifically to enjoy, soak it in. I think we do that naturally because we knew going into it that [that] the Cowboys weren't making the playoffs, so we really wanted to ... enjoy it, and also [we] know that that's the last game you'll have with that specific group and that specific team of DCC.”
Once the season is officially over, the girls typically have until the end of April to decide whether they’d like to re-audition for the squad. This year, however, decision day was pushed up to March 31.
“Literally every single day I woke up, and I was like, so what am I gonna do?” Weaver recalls.
After much deliberation, the 24-year-old dancer finally made the difficult decision to call it quits.
“I have experienced so many incredible things throughout the past three years of my time being a DCC, and I think just a lot of it came from being so full of gratitude and just so content in so many ways,” she tells SI of her choice. “I just felt so much peace knowing that I can walk away from something so grateful, and know that I can carry that into the next season of my life.”
“I'm just so overflowing with gratitude that I feel at peace that it's time to move on.”
Weaver’s final year in the uniform did not go as planned, per se. As the team prepared for its Christmas show, she suffered a debilitating high ankle sprain that kept her sidelined for multiple games. Still, she maintains that that experience and the continued toll on her body had little, if anything, to do with her choice to step away from the squad entirely.
“I really don't think it played a role at all,” she says. “I can see where people probably thought it did, but I had a really great recovery.”
“If anything, it actually rekindled my love for dance.”
As the series makes clear, the so-called “DCC style” of performance—a blend of country, hip-hop, jazz, and funk—is not for everyone. Even the most technical of dancers, for instance, might struggle with the look and feel of the movements, which are catered specifically to the size and scale of NFL stadiums.
Weaver, an alum of both a performing arts high school and the University of Alabama dance team, did not have any problem adapting to that niche—at least not outwardly. But now, with her uniform back on the rack, she is looking forward to returning to her classically trained roots and to honoring the style of dance that made her fall in love with the sport in the first place.
“Not saying that I'm excited to step away from pro cheer, because I love that style, but I'm really excited to step into what I have grown up doing, which is more, like, the jazz and tap and ballet and hip hop and musical theater."
Weaver married her now-husband, Will Allman, exactly two months before the first installment of the show was released.
“We had just gotten back from our honeymoon. I had just re-auditioned for my second season, and the very first day … of training camp is when the show came out.”
Focused primarily on the grueling process of earning back her uniform, Weaver opted to wait until the weekend to binge the series, which had become an instant hit among Netflix viewers. She did not know that her life was about to change overnight; had she, perhaps she would have pressed play that much sooner.
“Thursday, it dropped. ... Saturday morning, my husband and I went to First Watch. And I was, like, it's been two days, surely, we're still calm, everything's fine,” she recounts.
“I probably got stopped seven times. I’m like, the show has only been out for less than 48 hours and our reality has completely changed.”
Much of the show’s third season examines the increased spotlight the cheerleaders are under as the team’s popularity grows year after year. Indeed, all 36 members of the 2025-26 squad dealt with online hate in some form, much of it from DCC-focused fan communities online. (Weaver, for her part, is “two years Reddit sober,” she says.)
And though she does not cite it among her reasons for retiring, you have to imagine that the pressure of maintaining a positive public persona in the face of constant scrutiny would be tiring for, well, anyone ... let alone the biggest name on the team.
“At the end of the day, we're all just girls who dreamt really, really big and are blessed enough to be in these shoes. So I think that we just kind of take it one step at a time and all support and lean on each other when the fame can get overwhelming, and the weight can kind of get heavy.”
As she prepares for her next era, Weaver is now taking care to lean into the luxury of a flexible schedule—something she hasn’t enjoyed in years. She and Allman have also since moved back to Alabama, where she is working on a book “that I’m really pumped about.”
“I think my perspective has switched to just embracing the chaos and embracing the unexpected and the unknown. So I'm excited about that, while also just, like, doing some dance classes that I haven't done in a while.”
Even more so, though, she is ready to let go of the Dallas-sized secret she has been holding onto for months now.
“I'm excited that the world's going to know,” she says of her retirement decision. “[Y]ou never know how they're going to respond, but [I’m] excited to get this weight off my chest and to step into the next chapter.”
