Sacrifice and selflessness define coach Cori Close’s UCLA championship run
PHOENIX — “Let me show you who Cori really is,” a UCLA staffer says as he pushes the door open to the UCLA coaches’ temporary locker room at the Final Four arena. Around the corner, there’s a collection of recyclable cans and bottles that Close has picked up and set atop a mini fridge. In the next hour, those cans and bottles will be packed into a bag so they can take the flight back to Los Angeles with the newly crowned national champion UCLA Bruins.
Behind Close’s efforts, the entire team regularly gathers these bottles and cans after practices and games. Staffers then take turns returning the recyclables for 5 cents apiece, and later, that money is pooled and donated to one of the Bruins’ chosen nonprofit organizations. Recently, the UCLA women’s basketball team paid for school uniforms and a computer for girls in Tijuana with money collected from these recyclables.
The school later sent a photo of the girls watching one of the Bruins’ games this season. After games and practices — and yes, even on the day the Bruins won their first NCAA title, thwarting resident powerhouse South Carolina 79-51 — Close collects these plastic bottles and cans, pulling them out of trash cans or grabbing them from the locker room or empty gyms. Coaches and players joke that if you can find Close’s blue purse, you’ll undoubtedly find some recyclable cans and bottles nearby.
“That’s just who she is,” the staffer says. “That’s Cori. ” If there’s a hallmark of UCLA during Close’s tenure, it’s a sincere selflessness, but until now, it hasn’t always translated into wins at the most elite level.
But Sunday afternoon, Close, 54, won her first national championship, 15 years into her career as a head coach. In a sport dominated by longstanding luminaries such as Dawn Staley at South Carolina, Geno Auriemma at UConn and Kim Mulkey at Baylor and LSU — who had won 11 of the previous 13 national titles coming into the 2026 Final Four — Close became the first first-time coach to win a championship since Staley in 2017. The fact she had to take her Bruins through Staley’s Gamecocks was a rather appropriate coronation.
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