The UCLA women’s basketball team wanted to go dancing in March so badly, they got a head start.
When three Bruins starters — Lauren Betts, Gabriela Jaquez and Charlisse Leger-Walker — joined the UCLA dance team for a halftime performance at a men’s basketball game on March 3, Leger-Walker viewed it as just a fun little bonding moment and an expansion of the team’s intentional joy.
What she didn’t expect was the virality of the moment right as the 28-1 Bruins were headed to the Big Ten tournament.
“We just wanted 1,000 views,” she said.
Since then, videos of the routine have exploded across social media — 14.5k likes on espnW, 21.8k likes at Fox Sports, tens of thousands more across Instagram and TikTok.
Leger-Walker challenged the UCLA dance team to teach a halftime routine within 24 hours for a video on her YouTube channel, where she was joined by Jaquez. She said if the video got more than 1,000 likes, she and her teammates would perform during halftime at a men’s basketball game.
During halftime of the UCLA men’s basketball game against Nebraska, Leger-Walker, Jaquez and Betts stood at the front of the group and danced to Tate McRae’s “Just Keep Watching” for more than a minute in front of their teammates and coach Cori Close. The basketball team swarmed the trio after their performance.
“One of the dance captains [Kaili Tam] reached out to me, and she was like, ‘oh my gosh,’ like, if you wanted to ever do a collab with the dance team, we would totally be down,” Leger-Walker said. “I was like, totally. Like, I’m so down for this.”
Leger-Walker and Jaquez made a video on Feb. 16, practicing a dance routine with the challenge in mind. If it got 1,000 likes, they would dance at the men’s game against Nebraska on March 3.
It reached 1,200 likes, so the stage was set.
“I brought in [Betts] because I knew she’d love something like that,” Leger-Walker said, drawing a smirk from senior guard Kiki Rice, sitting next to her in the Bruins’ Big Ten tournament locker room.
“I almost had her in there!” Leger-Walker said, turning to Rice. “But there was such a time commitment.”
“I would have,” Rice said with a smile.
Leger-Walker began vlogging her season in December, beginning with a video titled, “MY 650 DAY RETURN FROM BRUTAL ACL INJURY!” She has done videos with the No. 5 ranked gymnastics team and No. 7 softball team, where Jaquez spent time last season.
Leger-Walker played her first four seasons at Washington State but tore her anterior cruciate ligament midway through her senior year. She transferred to UCLA and redshirted last season before starting the current one as a key weapon for UCLA.
In her return to the court, the sixth-year guard has averaged 9.1 points per game with 4.3 rebounds in 27.9 minutes.
With the Cougars, Leger-Walker had been one of the most lethal shooters in the country, averaging 17.7 points per game and shooting 34.9% from three-point range as a junior. She averaged more than 36 minutes per game until she tore her ACL while playing against UCLA.
“When you’re kind of in the end process of getting back onto the court, there is such a mental barrier of, is my knee going to give out again?” Leger-Walker said. “Like, ‘Can I do what I used to do?’ Trying not to compare myself to the player I was before. There’s so many factors that play into it. So, you know, I had to do a lot of therapy.”
The Bruins haven’t lost a game since Nov. 26 when they fell to No. 4 Texas. As the No. 2 team in the nation, UCLA is one of the favorites to make a run back to the Final Four.
Getting a fun moment outside of basketball is the kind of ethos of this season’s Bruins, with Jaquez saying Close has preached joy as much as wins.
“We have to enjoy life,” Jaquez said. “We play with joy, but we have that competitive edge too. But it makes it more fun out there if you are, you know, actually having fun.”
The next rehearsals come with more urgency and the key performance will be on a much bigger stage, with the NCAA tournament on the horizon.
“A big thing for me, is you’re playing, but you’re not only just playing, but you are playing on the best team in the nation,” Leger-Walker said. “Gratitude is big.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: latimes.com
