LSU junior all-arounder Lloimincia Hall had a weekend she’ll never forget.
In the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional on Saturday, Hall earned her third perfect 10 of the season on floor to help the LSU gymnastics team capture the title, assuring it a spot in the NCAA championships on April 18.
Yet as Hall scrolled through her Facebook page Sunday night, she saw that another of her floor performances from earlier in the season was receiving an abundance of attention, but it wasn’t the type she hoped for.
TotalSororityMove.com uploaded a TigerTV video featuring Hall’s Jan. 31 floor performance against Alabama, which also received a perfect score, to its website Sunday, and Hall became an online sensation overnight.
“My phone kept blinking. I was getting tagged on Facebook and there were about 15 emails on this one video,” Hall said.
By Tuesday night, the video had more than 370,000 views on YouTube. But Hall’s disdain for the website’s original headline of the video, which referred to her as the “baddest bitch alive,” quickly overcame her initial flattery from people’s responses.
“I didn’t mind people posting the video and letting it go viral, but I did not like how the title used the B-word to describe me,” Hall said. “What I believe in is Christ, and I didn’t want to damage His name by being connected to language of that nature.”
Having grown up in a pastor’s household, Hall was concerned the video’s title would misrepresent her religious beliefs. When she realized how rapidly the video was spreading, Hall said she posted on her Facebook account expressing her frustration over the title and asking that it be changed.
“I think they meant to use it in a positive way, but that word has such derogatory and negative meaning to it,” Hall said. “I’m not a negative person, and I’m also not someone who looks at that word in a positive way.”
LSU coach D-D Breaux said she wasn’t aware of the headline until her sister called to inform her.
“I immediately went looking for it, but it had already been taken care of,” Breaux said. “I think [Hall] handled the situation in a very mature way.”
Though the title was changed to the “baddest athlete of all time,” Hall’s notoriety continued to escalate as national media outlets like USA Today and People Magazine put Hall’s video on their websites. Hall also filmed an interview Tuesday scheduled for today’s broadcast of Good Morning America on ABC.
But with the NCAA championships set to take place in less than two weeks, Hall’s sole focus is on what she can do to help her team claim its first title, not on the tsunami of attention that flooded her way.
“It’s not about all the distractions; it’s about a national championship for this team,” Hall said. “That’s something I stood my ground on when I chose to not look at the publicity. I chose to turn it off and not deal with it because it didn’t have anything to do with LSU gymnastics winning a national championship.”
But the demanding task of winning a championship will require more than Hall’s floor routine, no matter how impressive, because one gymnast’s perfect score won’t stack up against a complete lineup.
Fortunately for Breaux, the Tigers do have a complete lineup, evidenced by their school-record and nation-best score of 198.325 at the Baton Rouge Regional last weekend that brought them back to the No. 1 ranking.
“As great as [Hall’s] routine is, it’s only 1/24 of what we have to do to be successful, and we have to make sure we keep that in perspective,” Breaux said.