Winning in style while having fun

Congratulations to the UCLA women’s basketball team, who not only brought home their program’s first NCAA championship, but also earned the hometown respect that has long eluded them.

The Lady Bruins have long been overlooked in the LA sporting scene. When they trounced Iowa by more than 50 points for the Big Ten title in early March, some started to notice.

But amid the drama of LA’s more flamboyant teams, UCLA was still an afterthought.

Then they started to dance. 

At halftime during the UCLA men’s basketball game against Nebraska, Charlisse Leger-Walker, Lauren Betts and Gabriela Jaquez performed a victory dance that they had only just learned.

Not only were they good, but they were also clearly having fun.

The women’s basketball team took that dancing spirit back onto the court with them, feeding it into their game as they destroyed opponents and made their way through the NCAA bracket.

On Sunday, against a South Carolina team that had already won the title several times in recent years, the Lady Bruins continued their dominance, holding the Gamecocks to single digits in the third quarter and winning by nearly thirty points.

And after donning their championship T-shirts, they danced yet again.

We are so used to the darker side of sports — the endless battles between unions and management, the stadium fights, the off-season antics that overshadow everything else.

Even at the collegiate level, questions of money have become all-pervasive in the NIL era.

The Lady Bruins brought us back to the core of what sports are supposed to be about: fun.

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And they showed that you can have fun while winning — not just because you are winning, which is always more fun than losing, but also just because you are enjoying the game.

Sports are fundamentally about men and women pushing each other to excel. That is why fans are drawn to them: at elite levels, the pursuit of excellence pushes human beings to the pinnacle of emotion and achievement.

We are fascinated by that, and inspired to pursue success in our own lives, in our own small ways.

But sports are also games. And adults enjoy them for the same reason children do: for the joy of playing, and competing.

The UCLA women’s basketball team exemplified joy — and the highest standards of collegiate play.

They are the ultimate scholar-athletes. They’re also a lot of fun.

Congratulations, ladies — and thank you.