OKLAHOMA CITY — Get together hats. Streamers. Star sun shades. A bubble machine, a disco ball and a unicorn pinata. The most well liked membership on the Girls’s Faculty World Sequence? It is UCLA’s dugout.
“It’s completely feral in there,” Bruins senior Taylor Stephens informed ESPN this week. “This program has been partying ever since my freshman 12 months and lengthy earlier than that, too. It is custom. Our staff, our dugout, it is a vibe — it is an simple vibe. We similar to to have enjoyable.”
UCLA likes to have enjoyable. And seemingly no program is having extra of it throughout the opening weekend of the 2025 WCWS than the No. 9-seeded Bruins, who return Sunday for an elimination recreation towards No. 7-seeded Tennessee (3 p.m. ET, ABC) following a 3-1 loss to No. 12 Texas Tech on Saturday.
Ranked third nationally in runs scored (481), eighth in residence runs (98) and anchored by a pitching triumvirate of Taylor Tinsley, Kaitlyn Terry and Addisen Fisher, UCLA made loads of noise en path to its thirty fourth WCWS look — a Division I document. But it surely wasn’t till the Bruins arrived in Oklahoma Metropolis this week that their raucous and rowdy occasion formally spilled again onto the nationwide stage.
Perennially among the many loudest dugouts in school softball, the Bruins introduced themselves with tinted glasses and disco lights in Thursday’s opener towards Oregon. After Jessica Clements launched her two-run, walk-off residence run, they celebrated at residence plate with blue and gold occasion hats on their heads. On Saturday, UCLA took issues up one other notch, flooding Devon Park’s third-base dugout with bubbles and adorning its partitions with paper streamers and balloons. A poster taped onto the dugout wall carried a easy message: “It is occasion time.”
“The occasion has at all times been part of the tradition right here,” stated junior infielder Jordan Woolery, half of the Bruins’ historic power-hitting duo with Megan Grant this spring. “After we’re sort of tense, that is probably not the most effective model of ourselves. Having enjoyable within the dugout, having enjoyable on the sector, all that chatter makes it simpler simply to play for one another with a way of freedom.”
Props, such because the pinata the Bruins hung from the dugout ceiling Saturday night time, have lengthy been fixtures of UCLA’s dugout occasion. Woolery, a first-team All-American, has witnessed many evolutions of them. Within the wake of earlier Bruins standard-bearers Megan Fariamo and Anna Vines, she recollects pickle jars, containers of Reese’s Puffs cereal and a parade of stuffed animals among the many most cherished props which have popped up within the UCLA dugout lately.
When the likes of Woolery and Stephens encountered packets of occasion hats or goofy sun shades earlier than Sport 1 on Thursday, there was no hesitation.
“We jumped proper on them,” Stephens stated. “The occasion hats are new. However the occasion shouldn’t be.”
Certainly, UCLA carries a wealthy historical past of dugout antics, relationship so far as the college’s dynastic softball rise within the Eighties. Whereas the 2025 Bruins battled Texas Tech ace NiJaree Canady on Saturday, generations of former gamers exchanged tales and photographs of WCWS dugout events and props of the previous by way of a WhatsApp group chat of UCLA softball alumni.
In some cases, the partying started even earlier than the gamers left the staff resort.
“Yearly in Oklahoma Metropolis, we’d keep on the Embassy Suites and there have been these two glass elevators that took you to your rooms,” 2004 nationwide champion Tara Henry stated. “On our solution to the stadium, we’d pile into them and have a staff dance occasion, actually shaking the elevators an hour earlier than a WCWS recreation.”
Even with a decades-long historical past, the scenes contained in the Bruins’ dugout this week seemingly mark a stark departure from previous eras of this system and the game.
First underneath coach Sharon Backus after which Sue Enquist, UCLA constructed itself into school softball’s first superpower by way of no-nonsense depth and stringent program requirements. However whereas the ongoings of Bruins’ dugout celebrations and the era of gamers inside them have advanced, former UCLA gamers like Henry see the identical core pillars nonetheless propping up this system underneath Nineteenth-year coach Kelly Inouye-Perez, who performed for Enquist from 1989 to 1993 and spent 13 seasons as an assistant earlier than taking up this system in 2007.
“It is at all times been about how will we handle to remain collectively as a staff and have enjoyable, however in the end be held accountable,” Henry stated. “We’re seeing a extra free, lighter kind of staff and a unique expression of it. I feel Kelly has been an enormous a part of that. However consider me, they nonetheless have requirements and nonetheless perceive what it means to play for UCLA softball.”
The Bruins had been fast to throw on their occasion hats in Thursday’s opener. Nonetheless, how UCLA’s latest props discovered their means into the dugout remained a thriller to its gamers into the weekend earlier than a gaggle of former Bruins led by Taylor Sullivan, Alaiyah Jordan and Malia Quarles confirmed up with extra Saturday, softball alums persevering with the occasion tradition.
“Shoutout to Get together Metropolis in Moore, Oklahoma,” stated Sullivan, who reached the WCWS thrice with UCLA. “The Bruin occasion is simply the epitome of UCLA softball. Enjoying collectively, enjoying for one another, making an attempt to make the Bruin bubble proud.”
Inouye-Perez introduced a transparent message after a pair of late Texas Tech residence runs sank the Bruins on Saturday, sending UCLA into an elimination recreation with Tennessee on Sunday. Lower than 24 hours after dealing with one fireballer in Canady, the Bruins might be examined once more Sunday by Girl Vols ace Karlyn Pickens, proprietor of the quickest recorded pitch in softball historical past.
“The underside line is we’re not carried out but,” Inouye-Perez stated. “Now we simply have extra time to have the ability to play extra video games and get actually scorching. I am excited. We won’t wait to get again on the market.”
The Bruins, who scratched three runs off Pickens once they confronted the hard-throwing junior in February, intend to increase their keep in Oklahoma Metropolis on Sunday. So long as UCLA stays within the WCWS area, the dugout occasion will go on.
“You will see extra props tomorrow and the subsequent day and the subsequent day,” Stephens stated. “The props are eternal. They’re overflowing. The occasion would not cease.”
