UCLA’s Final Four women’s basketball team is loaded with athletes who have excelled in other sports, which players feel has made them a better team. It’s also allowed some Bruins to share a message about youth sports.
Starters Lauren Betts, a 6-foot-7 center, and guard Gabriela Jaquez smiled when asked about their experiences in other sports when speaking to the media on April 2 at Mortgage Matchup Center in Phoenix.
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That’s the site of the Women’s Final Four and NCAA championship game on Friday, April 3 and Sunday, April 5. UCLA (35-1) faces Texas (35-3) at 6:30 p.m. MST. The game will be televised on ESPN.
Both teams were No. 1 Regional seeds.
As recently as two years ago, Jaquez, a senior, was on UCLA’s nationally-ranked softball team, along with teammate Megan Grant, who this season left the Bruins basketball team when softball season started.
“I definitely appreciate the opportunity that I got to play with the UCLA softball team, their World Series run. That was a lot of fun,” Jaquez said. “Playing softball helped me a lot. It helped me get a break from basketball, hang out with my other friends, do something fun.
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“It’s just important that young kids try multiple sports. It doesn’t need to be so serious so quick. You’re only a little kid for a little bit. It’s important they try all sports.”
Betts, born in Spain, was into volleyball and competitive swimming. It got difficult to wake up in predawn hours to go to swim meets, then playing three AAU basketball games back to back to back.
UCLA Bruins guard Gabriela Jaquez (11) speaks to members of the media during the NCAA Women’s Final Four media day at Mortgage Matchup Center in Phoenix on April 2, 2026.
But she cherishes the time spent with her dad, a former pro basketball player in Europe, and how much fun she had.
“I’ve made so many friends throughout it. And not taking it so seriously,” Betts said. “It’s meant to be fun at the end of the day. That’s why we all started playing basketball, is honestly just because it was really fun.”
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The Bruins are loaded with athletes who excelled in other sports before choosing basketball. Guard Charlisse Leger-Walker played touch rugby and netball growing up in New Zealand, which she described with enthusiastic detail.
“Netball is basically like basketball, except you don’t dribble, you wear dresses and there’s no backboard,” Leger-Walker said. “So it’s like a pole and a little hoop. There’s seven people on the court on both sides and it’s kind of like soccer positions. You have attackers, defenders and then like a center court, center field.”
Leger-Walker said playing other sports helps with spatial awareness, or using different footwork.
“Being able to read defenses, read different schemes and also just being able to play with so many different types of people,” she said. “There’s different personalities in different sports, and just being exposed to that at a young age and even throughout high school and going onto college is a really great thing.”
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Guard Kiki Rice is a certified scuba diver. Teammate Gianna Kneepkens was a top high school soccer player in Minnesota as well as a basketball player.
“Soccer was good for me because it got my mind off basketball,” Kneepkens said. “I was able to just explore and use different parts of my body. I think it helped with coordination,” she said.
As with Jaquez, soccer allowed Kneepkens to have a different set of friends and teammates. She was more into soccer until she got to high school, and at that point the sport of choice wasn’t difficult.
“I always think it’s good to do different sports and try out and see what you love,” Kneepkens said.
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Bruins coach learns from previous Final Four
UCLA head coach Cori Close admitted she could have done a better job as head of the women’s basketball program last year when UCLA made it to the Final Four. Close said she was consumed with other matters that took away from her getting her team ready for the big stage.
“I did a crappy job as a leader. The moment we touched down, I was in transfer portal. Not a great situation,” Close said Thursday. “One of my biggest regrets of last spring is I didn’t celebrate them enough. I didn’t find ways to go, ‘this team was the most, at that point, successful team since 1978-79. I let myself get wrapped up in everything that was transpiring in the portal. I don’t think I did a good enough job in that way.”
This year, the returning Bruins players have a better sense of the team’s culture and expectations, Close said.
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“We were able to self-reflect and we were able to realize that we were building off of something really good, that there was a lot to celebrate but also a lot to build from,” Close said. “At that point we were able to do a really good job of saying ‘Hey, look at what position we’re in now.’ We can actually use that as such a great teacher for where we want to go this year.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: At Women’s Final Four, UCLA players recall fun from other sports
