Coach Cori Close talks new season and getting ready to raise that banner Sunday

All right, Maria, thank you. As UCLA says, in the locker room after a win, it's a great day to be alive and be a Bruin. And this year, it's also a good year to be a Bruins fan. I feel like we're part of the team here with this background, right? Aside from football team having a historic year, our next guest brought a national championship to UCLA. Coach Corey Close led the UCLA women's basketball team to the NCAA national championship earlier this year. And this Sunday's game at Pauley will be a big one. And the team's championship banner will be raised to forever commemorate the team and the coach. Coach Close joins us now before tonight's game against Arizona. First of all, thanks for coming in today. You have a busy day. I have a busy day. We have a big game tonight versus Arizona and preparing for a great weekend. But always want to make time for y'all. Congratulations on all the success. Thank you. You're definitely ones to root for, making us proud here in L.A. So tell us about the significance of raising that banner. I mean, it's going to be such a big occasion. It's going to be such a big occasion, and I think one of the big things is to be able to say thank you to all the people that came before us. There was a national championship in 1978, and a lot of those alums are going to be coming back to celebrate with us. And we realize that we stand on the shoulders of a lot of people who came before us. Nobody does something like this on their own. And so what I'm most excited about for Sunday is being able to say thank you and to celebrate the people who helped us get there. So one of your mantras is run it forward. Talk about that. How do you came up with that and what it really means? Well, I really stole it from Mike McDonald of the Seattle Seahawks. But, you know, I don't want I want this team that this year to feel free to have their own story. We're not trying to run it back. We're not trying to repeat. We're trying to get better. And running it forward implies that we're going to grow. We're going to build on what happened. And this is hopefully going to be the first of many. First of many, how do you keep the success going? We know that WNBA, they're poaching the players from you. How do you stay elite and make sure you're competitive going forward? I think it's all about surrendering the outcomes and having an elite process. And that's sort of an overused phrase right now in terms of just staying in the process. But I really believe that is the key to answering your question to stay at an elite level, having Having sustained excellence is to be fully invested in the process that you're in. And the values that you've promised to protect. And then outcomes find you. Well, talk about that investment in women's sports specifically because of the fact that the pathway to get to WNBA or even to UCLA, right, is a tough one. And the investment's not always there. How has progress been in that front? Well, I think one of the reasons that we were able to experience the success that we did is because I had an administration and a chancellor who invested. There's no accidents in that. I think you're seeing that it used to be, you know, back in the day, that it was a Title IX box that we were trying to check. No longer. We are a really incredible asset worth investing in, and from a business perspective, not from a compassion perspective. These are elite women that are mastering their craft, but we do need everybody. You see what happens from the Valkyries when you do have ownership and vision and strategic planning, what can happen both from a championship perspective and also from a business perspective. First women's sports team to eclipse a billion-dollar evaluation. So I do think it takes investment, both attendance, corporate partnerships, as well as media rights. So, you know, you've got your title, you have the football team doing really great. The enthusiasm that's bursting in the athletic department right now. Well, you know, shout out to Coach Bob Chesney and what he's done with the football team. Also, shout out to, you know, Mick Cronin. He's got the men's basketball team playing at such a high level. But also the Olympic sports at UCLA. They sometimes don't get as much pub, but they have been carrying the banner of excellence for a long time. But we are in a really sweet time. Of having just across the board, incredible excellence and women's soccer, women's soccer moms. I know all about the soccer. That was my first love, you know, but I think that you have to have vision. You have to have resources and you have to. I think what has been really cool about being a part of our athletic department is that we're doing it in the classroom and we're also doing it in the community. And we haven't lost sight that being a student athlete is a really special thing. What would you say to all those girls who are out there dreaming, pounding the pavement, pounding the courts, pounding the fields? Dream big and work bigger. But the really great thing about the season of development we're in, it's not even little girls, it's little boys too. We had a major photo shoot in downtown LA, and I was driving down there and rounded the corner to go in, and there was this dad and his son in Kiki Rice jerseys. And I'm like, this is not just about inspiring girls, though that's always been our priority. It's about using basketball to impact, to inspire, and to hopefully teach life lessons that go back. So beyond the court. Absolutely. That's the beauty of a sport is you really do learn life lessons. Yeah, name a better training ground in our country. And I think we have a real responsibility to keep youth sports fun and equipping and to not get ahead of ourselves that you're going to have the next Division One athlete all the time. It's the parents that get in the way, right? I know. I know. But I do think it's really important that we try to protect that because it really is our best training ground. Amazing job that you're doing. We're rooting you on. Yeah, good luck to see that banner raised. It's gonna be fun. Rightfully so, you deserved it. Okay, to see that championship banner raised in the rafters at Pauley's this Sunday, or to check out the Bruins in action all season long, including tonight, get your tickets at uclabruins.com. You don't wanna miss all the action. Thank you so much for coming in. Thanks for having me, really appreciate it. So great. It's gonna be really fun.