Dressed in white hammer pants, a black top and wearing a hat over a white bandana, Isabella “Bibi” Avila stood in line as the Tiger Girls were about to walk onstage. The lights were bright, the room was packed and the crowd began to chant “L-S-U.” Avila said she almost blacked out as the music started playing to “Like a Boy” by Ciara.

By the next time Avila danced this routine, the Tiger Girls had gone viral and won the 2022 Universal Dance Association Dance Nationals in Orlando, Florida.

“I’d never experienced something like that,” Avila said. “That was definitely a core memory for me.”

Three UDA National Championships later, placing first twice in hip-hop and third in jazz, and after having cheered on the Tigers on the field countless times, Avila is now a senior at LSU. She said she almost didn’t apply to LSU in the first place.

Originally from Beaumont, Texas, Avila grew up watching LSU football games on TV with her dad. When she was in her senior year of high school, Avila said her dance teacher encouraged her to try out for LSU’s dance team.

“I was like, ‘No.’ I just didn’t think I would even make it. Like I didn’t think I was at that level.”

Yet her teacher’s insistence, the cheap application fee and LSU signs started to change her mind.

“This is very crazy to say, but I started to see a lot of LSU signs wherever I went. I would see people with LSU shirts, LSU hats, or I’d be in the drive-thru and the car in front had an LSU license plate.”

Her mom had told Avila she could apply “anywhere between a four-hour radius.”

“If you want to try, let’s try,” Vanessa Melancon said she told her daughter. “Whatever God has.”

So Avila decided to give it a try.

“And that’s basically how I got here,” Avila said. “And now I’m about to finish!” Avila first started dancing when she was three years old when her mom put her in dance classes with her older cousin at City Dance Center in Beaumont, Texas.

“I hated it for the first few weeks. I would cry and throw up. I didn’t like it at all,” she said.

According to Melancon, Avila was a very shy child but always had a sense of rhythm.

“When she was very little, we could tell she had really good rhythm because of all the little TV commercial songs that would come on; she would move her body,” Melancon said.

Avila said she stopped attending dance classes for a while, but when she was put back in, she loved it. Teachers started to notice how good she was and started putting her in the front, according to her mom.

“I think that’s when a light bulb came on for her, and she started to break out of her shyness,” Melancon said.

Avila went on to join Lancaster Dance Academy during high school, and she was also part of the drill team at Westbrook High School.

“I look back, and I’m like, I don’t even know how I did the schedule I had,” Avila said.

She would go straight to the dance studio after school and sometimes stay as late as 10 p.m. Some days, she would go to drill practice in between school and dance practice.

“If I had to choose between going to get dinner with friends or practice to get better, I would for sure choose to go practice, which is crazy to say, but that’s just how much I love it,” she said.

“She just has a big heart,” Melancon said. “She’s dedicated.”

Avila said the main thing she has had to figure out as a student-athlete at LSU is time management.

“Even though it is finals week and dead week, we still have to go to games; we still have to go and do performances.”

Although the Tiger Girls do get a week off practice for finals week, their winter schedule remains hectic. They get to go home two days before Christmas, and then they are back to prepare for the UDA Nationals that take place in January.

“Any downtime that I have, I’m constantly studying,” she said.

Avila’s first time attending a football game happened in her freshman year as she cheered on the Tigers on the field.

“That being my first one and getting to be a part of it is just a crazy thought, and it was just very rewarding,” she said.

The Tiger Girls meet every year during the summer for summer camp training, where the choreographers teach them their new routines. In the summer of 2022, Avila said their coaches asked them to bring something unusual: heels.

“It was definitely something risky, and we knew that it was risky, too,” Avila said of the 2023 UDA Nationals dance routine to Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love.”

She said there were a lot of injuries that year as the Tiger Girls adjusted to dancing while wearing heels, and they had to do more ankle-strengthening exercises.

The Tiger Girls’ second first-place win on hip-hop in three years took place in the 2024 UDA Nationals after they performed their “Smooth Criminal” Michael Jackson routine, which Avila said is her favorite.

“It was so fun to get to portray a character, and it happened to be so successful,” she said.

Avila said she and her team had to spend a lot of time learning “popping and locking,” hip-hop-based techniques.

“It was so hard to do,” Avila said. “But it was really fun,”

That year, the Tiger Girls also placed third in jazz, the program’s first time doing so in 10 years. Avila said it almost felt like they had placed first because LSU had not been seen as a jazz team.

“That was kind of our mission to come and be like, ‘Hey, we’re actually jazz dancers too, and we’ll show you right now,’” Avila said. “And it felt like we were finally able to show the world that we can do a hip-hop dance, but we are also very technically trained.”

Avila is now a mass communication senior at LSU with a concentration in journalism. She said her stepmom works in news media, which inspired her to want to work in journalism one day, too.

“Eventually, I want to be able to be a voice for dancers and for spirit squads and such and give them their flowers that they deserve,” she said.

Avila said there is room for more journalism covering dance and cheer and that she hopes to be a part of that once she retires from dancing.

But she said she is not done dancing just yet and might pursue dancing for an NFL or NBA team. After she retires from dance, she hopes to one day open her own dance studio.

In describing the Tiger Girls team, she referred to them as a family, pointing out that they love to do everything together.

“We’re very tight-knit,” she said.

Her teammate and LSU freshman Tiger Girl Isabella Ferrara attested to the same.

“She’s been such a genuine person to let me learn from her, and I’ve already learned so much from her,” Ferrara said. “Like she said, we are such a big family.”

During their summer training, Ferrara was matched with Avila as her summer buddy, and she said Avila was constantly encouraging and motivating her to do her best.

“She’s the same with the team,” Ferrara said. “That’s just the culture we create within Tiger Girls. Like I have your back, and you have my back.”

Looking back on the past four years, Avila said she is going to miss it.

“I came onto the team, and I had no expectations and no idea really what I was getting into,” Avila said.

After their first performance of “Like A Boy,” Avila and her teammates walked backstage and were surrounded by the other teams, who made a tunnel for them to walk through while playing their song.

Other dancers went up to them and said they had loved the dance. Avila said she will always remember that special first win.

“Everything that happened, I was so trying to just take it in and understand, like, this is bigger than I thought it was. And how crazy and awesome it is that I get to be a part of it.”