ST. PETERSBURG - Ashley Avis, a confident, willowy teenager, is Miss Teen Model of the Universe 2003. She won the crown in the west African nation of Ghana, nearly 6,000 miles from her parents' Shore Acres house.

The St. Petersburg Catholic High School student hopes she can parlay the title into a career of modeling, singing or acting.

She leaves for New York City next week to visit top modeling agencies and perhaps even meet P. Diddy's crew in a quest to get them to slip the popular singer a copy of her first CD, You Don't Deserve Me.

Ashley's parents are proud of their daughter's looks and talents, 4.1 grade point average and the character she has displayed on the way to her most recent accomplishment.

During an interview at her parents' Bayshore Boulevard home, Ashley spoke honestly about her two-week trip to Ghana, where she traveled last fall to compete for the Miss Teen Model of the Universe crown. Her food was mostly plantains, rice and chicken, she said. When she got fish, it included the head - eyes and all. Powerbars brought from home sustained her, she said.

Her adventure began when her top position in a national pageant qualified her to take part in the Model of the Universe World competition, one of a long list of contests run by a British company that promotes such pageants as Miss Tourism World, Miss Bikini World, Mr. Tourism World, Miss Millionaire and Miss Internet WWW.

While in Ghana, the 11th-grader - then just 16 - met the country's president and a tribal representative. Ashley also presented a check for $333.43 to Christ the King Catholic parish. She had raised the money at school.

Sitting in her parents' waterfront home, which is being remodeled, the girl with perfect posture and a firm handshake talked about what led her to beauty pageants and modeling.

"When I was a really little baby, my parents tried to get me into baby modeling. I don't know exactly the entire story," Ashley replied.

"I took you to the prettiest child pageant at the mall in Chicago and you were wearing a little Mickey Mouse dress. You didn't get anything," her mother, Dr. Victoria Woods, contributed.

"When she was a little girl, she wanted everything fancy. Fancy dresses, everything. When she was 4, I took her to her first makeup session for her birthday and she had a little girl makeup done and we had a mother and daughter picture taken. It was just for fun," her mother continued.

By the time she was 8, though, the little girl who had been plied with modeling classes and ballet lessons took an interest in horseback riding, instead.

"And my next pageant was when I was 15. I found it through the Internet. I called the director two days before the pageant. He said a girl dropped out. He invited me to do it and I did, and I wore my homecoming gown," Ashley said.

According to Ashley and her parents, she stood out in that competition for all the wrong reasons.

"Everybody had very elaborate gowns," Dr. Woods said.

"And I was there in my Dillard's homecoming dress," Ashley said.

Her father, Richard T. Avis, an attorney on Snell Isle, added with a laugh: "A lot of the experienced moms in the audience are going: She must be the new girl."

Gaffes notwithstanding, Ashley placed in the top 10. It inspired her to enter other contests, and before long she captured two state titles, Miss Florida Teen United American and Miss Central Florida Teen of America.

Next she was awarded the Miss USA Model of the Universe title in Atlanta and learned she had a month and a half to prepare for the world title in Ghana. She got permission to miss school and took off for Africa toward the end of October accompanied by two chaperones. It was her first trip overseas. Her mother joined her during the second week.

It was an arduous experience.

"Ashley was at the point of exhaustion," her mother said. "But she nailed it. It was a good lesson for her."

"Actually, I was really sick when I got back to America," Ashley said, explaining that she suffered from exhaustion and dehydration and had to miss more school with midterms just two weeks away.

"She had not been used to the 18-hour days, the time zone changes, the different food," her father said.

"It was just a whole exhausting two weeks."

It included a much anticipated meeting with President John Kufuor, who was educated at Oxford.

"We were supposed to start the meeting at 12, but it didn't start until 2," Ashley recalled.

While some contestants wore national costumes, Ashley, whose cowgirl outfit included a short skirt and a cape, felt it was more appropriate to wear a red silk gown to meet the Ghanaian leader. (Her pageant wardrobe also included a bikini decorated with Austrian crystals, and a swirling white evening gown with a 3-foot train and a coconut bikini made in Ghana. One was provided to each contestant.) The president wore a business suit.

When he eventually came out of his office, "the media flocked to him and he began to talk about the Model of the Universe and just promoting the image of Ghana," Ashley recalled.

"He was definitely downplaying the fact that we were doing it to win the crown."

But the wait for the president was nothing compared to her accident.

"Have you ever seen the movie Miss Congeniality, how she falls? I didn't fall on stage, thankfully. I fell by the pool. It was right after a photo shoot," Ashley said.

The result was a mild concussion, a trip to the hospital and a 24-hour wait for a CAT scan.

"I don't think I would go to Ghana again. It was a scary experience, because we didn't feel safe. Just being an American, it was just very different," she said.

Even amid unfamiliar food and customs and the grinding poverty that she saw, she focused on her quest for the crown, Ashley said. And she would do it again.

"Even though we are talking a lot about the negatives of the country, it really was a good experience and I returned with just a different aspect on life completely," she said.

"I came back and just realized that some of the petty high school peer pressure, that kind of thing, everybody experiences that in high school and just like stupid remarks people make. ... It doesn't bother me anymore, because I realize it's just a little high school bubble and people aren't thinking beyond that. ... I realize I have a great life and, in general, I'm really glad I had the experience."

Her parents will not say how much they've spent to launch their daughter on the pageant circuit. Dresses at Regalia Magnificent Apparel in Orlando can start from about $600 for a discontinued gown and run as high as $10,000, her mother said.

"We've had serious lessons in makeup and hair and learning all the things you need to do," she added.

"In order to seriously compete at that level, you do have to spend money."

"If you want to compete at the top," Ashley's father added, "you have to spend money at all elements of what I call a cottage industry. None of this has been wasted."

For the high-schooler, whose talents include building Web sites, the next step is New York. She has no plans to enter more contests.

"You should do the pageants to open doors. She's achieved that," Dr. Woods said.

"It's a means to an end," her father said.

"She's used it as a stepping stone."

Ashley has been fortunate. She was discovered in January by a promoter at Starbucks near BayWalk who connected her with a photographer with contacts in the modeling industry.

She's made a CD with Mark Dye, whose former voice student was Backstreet Boy Nick Carter. She's making an interactive horror DVD in which she is chased through the woods.

"We're hoping that Ashley might get into modeling, acting and singing," her mother said.

"I'm going to see which one works the best," Ashley said.