One evening this past October, Lauren Betts left her black purse at a team dinner. She had put it on her chair, started talking to other attendees and got distracted by an ice cream cart. After she finished her vanilla-strawberry mix with an Oreo topping, she headed out. She forgot to grab her bag.
On the way home, Betts realized the implications of the missing item. She had her personal necessities. She thought more about the enforcement of a UCLA team rule: If a player or staffer loses a belonging, and it is eventually found and returned to a coach, the person who lost the item has to sing in front of the team to get it back. Coach Cori Close ended up with Betts’ bag. “I can’t wait to hear you sing tomorrow,” she texted one of the newest members of her program.
At the end of the Bruins’ film study the following day, Close enforced the policy and called Betts to the front of the film room. She faced the group. Performances normally last around 30 seconds. Betts, however, belted out her go-to karaoke song, “Super Bass” by Nicki Minaj, for more than two minutes. A blue water bottle parodied as a microphone. She danced and sang and rapped, all while teammates supplied backup vocals from their seats. “For Lauren, it was a whole concert,” Close says. “I didn’t…
