Built for the Journey

Mon, 02 Nov 2026 21:20:41 GMT

For UCLA Women’s Basketball Head Coach Cori Close, success isn’t just about championships. It’s about investing in the lives of others and leaving a Kingdom impact.

Cori Close has had quite the year.

The UCLA Women’s Head Basketball Coach took the Bruins to a 31-1 record last season, going undefeated in Big Ten Conference play, and winning their first national championship since 1978. She also earned Big Ten Coach of the Year honors and was also named the 2025 Naismith Coach of the Year and Associated Press Coach of the Year.

As the Bruins’ leader for 15 years, she had built upon an already powerful program, focusing the team on a growth mindset and the process rather than the destination. For her personally, this means remaining close to God and trusting Him when she wants to run full speed ahead on her own.

The 2026 national championship topped a dream-like season, but preparation began decades ago, when Close witnessed the power of transformative coaching through her dad and many other coaches.

Basketball in the Blood

Growing up in Milpitas, California, in a family full of faith and sports, Close enjoyed a firm start in her journey. Her dad was a teacher and coach, and her mom wanted home to feel open and hospitable. As she watched her dad coach and lead by example, she learned how to compete and live with Christ in mind, and it embedded itself into her DNA.

“My dad was fiercely competitive, but it was never as meaningful as impacting people’s hearts,” she said. “I saw what our family got to experience, using sports in a transformational way.”

Driven from a young age, she made it her mission to succeed in basketball. Performance became everything, and she pushed sports to the top of her priority list. But this tilted her off-balance from her family’s way of competing.

“I knew all the right things to say because I was raised in a Christian home, and I learned what I needed to say and do to have people approve of how I was living,” Close said. “But I didn’t understand what a personal relationship with Jesus really meant. I thought I did, but really basketball was my god.”

She ruptured her Achilles tendon during her freshman year at UC Santa Barbara and wrestled with the news. But one of her spiritual mentors mentioned there may be something spiritual in this setback.

“She wrote me a letter that said, ‘Sometimes when you are a real doer in life, God lets you come to the end of your rope so that your only chance or your only choice is to let Him catch you,’” Close recalled. “I really took that to heart.”

This was the turning point Close needed to understand how empty the game was if she let it usurp God’s place in her life.

“An idol is anything we chase after more than we chase after God,” Close said. “It was really in brokenness and failure that I started to learn how to cling to Jesus and boast all the more of my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

Close has clung to Jesus since then, as she dove into a coaching career starting with an assistant role at UCLA from 1993 to 1995. She served as an assistant at UC Santa Barbara from 1995 to 2004, and then became associate head coach of the Florida State Seminoles from 2004 to 2011 under Head Coach Sue Semrau before being named UCLA’s head coach in April 2011.

Stepping into the prestigious position as a first-time head coach could have been intimidating, but Close had support from a friendship with another Bruins coach from her assistant days: legendary Men’s Basketball Head Coach John Wooden.

Close would visit Wooden’s home, where they established a mentor/mentee relationship, and she’d glean wisdom from both the professional and personal side of sports and life. Many of her conversations with Wooden, who won 10 national championships in a 12-year stretch (1964-75), revolved around this concept.

“Though he won 10 national championships, there was not one championship year that he didn’t look back and go, ‘The journey was so much more meaningful than actually winning the championship,’” Close said.

She didn’t understand it at the time (winning a championship did sound like a lot of fun), but Wooden’s philosophies found their way into her psyche that indelibly marked her approach to the sport.

Community Matters

Coming into the 2025-26 season, there were already rumblings of the team’s championship makeup. Close had to train her mind and heart to remain aligned with God as the wins — and pressure — mounted.

“I was trying to live from an inside-out way and surrender the outcomes because a lot of outside noise was saying, ‘Championship or bust,’” she said. “I had to resist the outside world’s standards, and my standard needed to be to love them well, submit to the mission and calling that I believe God had for me and go about my transformational coaching.”

The team was good, though, and it enjoyed a historic season. Six of her players were drafted in the WNBA, setting two records in the process: most players drafted from the same team in the first round (five) and most players drafted from the same team in the draft.

But she’ll quickly deflect the spotlight, preferring to praise her team, staff and spiritual community.

“There have been truth tellers in my life, role models who have poured into me, prayed for me and supported me, and I am so grateful for them,” Close said. “There’s just no way I’m in this position without that group of people.”

Bar Raised

Growth mindset. Transformational coaching. Continued dependence on God and support from others. This has been Close’s M.O. from the beginning.

“I first met Coach Close when she was leading our women’s basketball camp at UC Santa Barbara,” said FCA Executive Vice President of Camps Brian Schroeder. “Since that time, she has been faithful to use hoops as vehicle to lead her team in a way that highlights the FCA Values of Integrity, Service, Teamwork and Excellence.”

Close has used her position for others and the Kingdom of Jesus, serving at FCA Camps and creating relationships with staff. Thanks to her undeniable faith and partnership with FCA over the years, she was awarded the 2020 FCA Kay Yow Heart of a Coach Award, which is given to a women’s basketball coach who has coached according to biblical principles and nurtured the heart, body and mind of the athlete.

In the city of Hollywood stars and a world that revolves around performance and success, Close is sought after for deals, speaking and influence. Last summer was a rush of camps, recruiting visits, brand deals, speaking commitments, interviews and dealing with the transfer portal. It’s more than she anticipated, but that puts Close in a perfect place of dependence on God to lead a top-tier basketball program and all the responsibilities, pressures and obligations that go with it.

“UCLA was my first head coaching job. I didn’t earn this,” Close said. “Somehow God appointed me here, so I’ve been keenly aware that He gave me a vision and a mission that I could never do on my own strength. He has given me the opportunity to impact people, enter their worlds and love them where they are through basketball,” she said. “It’s a gift, so it’s my job to steward it well.”

Listening to the Right Voices

For the 2026-27 season, Close doesn’t want other voices to set this year’s standard or surround her team with talk of defending their title.

“To use a phrase from Seattle Seahawks Head Coach Mike Macdonald, ‘We’re not running it back; we’re running it forward,’” she said. “We’re going to continue to build on what we've learned, making sure we guard our hearts and are committed to shutting out the outside noise and innovate and grow.”

“As a Bruin alum, I am honored to cheer for her as she invests into the faith and lives of her players,” Schroeder said.

As Close has witnessed, sticking close to Jesus and trusting Him brings far greater joy than she could have achieved on her own. Winning a national championship was definitely fun, a reality that became her “Ephesians 3:20 moment,” she said. But as she reflected on the high-beam joy of their championship win on the plane ride back to L.A., she recalled those long-ago conversations with Wooden and took a deep breath.

“You know what?” she thought. “The journey really was better.”

-FCA-

Photos courtesy of UCLA Athletics

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