Sports
How UCLA softball plans to 'level up' mentally after shocking collapse
When Megan Grant closes her eyes to lock in before a practice, the UCLA sophomore pictures her powerful swing connecting on pitches. She sees impeccably fielded ground balls at third base. She watches herself hit towering home runs.
Grant says she believes in the power of visualization, that the images in her head can manifest onto the field. That belief is why, days before No. 10 UCLA was set to begin its season, Grant stopped to picture how she wanted it to end.
“Make it to OKC,” Grant said in a low voice.
After UCLA failed to advance out of an NCAA regional for the first time since 2013, the Bruins are refocused on starting a new streak of Women’s College World Series appearances. They open the season Thursday against Cal State Fullerton at Easton Stadium.
While healing from last year’s shocking collapse when the No. 2-seeded Bruins didn’t win an NCAA tournament game for the first time since 2012, head coach Kelly Inouye-Perez was forced to evaluate all parts of the program. She mixed up coaching roles, hiring Rob Schweyer as a fourth assistant overseeing pitching. Knowing the pitching staff lost three seniors, including two-time Pac-12 pitcher of the year Megan Faraimo, Inouye-Perez moved herself back into the bullpen. Longtime assistant Lisa Fernandez is back with the hitters.
But the biggest change has been the team’s commitment to mental preparation, hoping the extra attention to detail will help a team stacked with All-American candidates perform at its best in the biggest moments.
“It’s going to be a year of blocking out noise,” Inouye-Perez said. “In order to play and be your best, you’ve gotta be able to block out all distractions about outcome and noise and be able to to figure out how you can perform.”
Under the guidance of mental preparation consultants, UCLA players start every practice and pregame routine by putting on headphones to listen to instrumental music. Some opt for faster, electronic beats. Others choose slower songs that help slow their thoughts. Players spread out on the outfield grass, in the team’s clubhouse or in the locker room and visualize their own highlights for each 10-minute meditation session.
The idea was met with skepticism from some players at first, but shortstop Maya Brady said she now wishes she had been doing this her whole career.
UCLA outfielder Maya Brady bats during a game against Oregon State in April 2021.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“Going on this mindfulness journey has really allowed me to take a different approach to game day,” the reigning Pac-12 player of the year said. “Maybe instead of getting anxious and butterflies and thinking about everything that can go wrong in a way, it’s really changed my mindset into thinking about everything that can go right.”
The Bruins experienced the gamut last year. Their 52 regular-season wins were the most in the country and the most for the program since 2001. That team knew how to win, Inouye-Perez said. That fact made their season-ending three-game losing streak all the more gut-wrenching.
Players and coaches mourned the sudden end of the season together in the clubhouse for more than three hours. There was stunned silence. Total numbness. Tears.
The shocking 2-1 loss to Liberty showed Grant that nothing in softball is guaranteed, even on a team with the most NCAA titles in the sport.
“[I’m] just excited to prove ourselves again,” said Grant, who led the Bruins with 58 RBIs and was named a second-team All-American by the National Fastpitch Coaches Assn. last year. “People have put us on a pedestal, are now not putting us on a pedestal, whatever. … I love being the underdog.”
UCLA softball coach Kelly Inouye-Perez is focusing on improving the Bruins’ mental preparedness this season.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
For the first time since 2020, UCLA is not the coaches’ favorite to win the Pac-12, finishing second in the preseason poll to No. 3 Stanford. Without longtime stalwarts such as Faraimo, second baseman Anna Vines, outfielder Kelli Godin and designated player Aaliyah Jordan, it feels as if the Bruins need to find a new identity, Brady said.
But it’s nothing Inouye-Perez hasn’t conquered before. The Bruins have always recovered after losing generational players, the coach emphasized. Some wonder what UCLA will do without last year’s seniors. Inouye-Perez knows what she has with sophomore pitcher Taylor Tinsley, Washington transfer Jadelyn Allchin and second baseman Seneca Curo, who is coming off a season-ending shoulder injury.
“[We] got a little fire in our gut,” Inouye-Perez said. “We’re here to just level up.”
Inouye-Perez chose the team’s “level up” theme to symbolize that the Bruins weren’t panicking after last year’s disappointment. They will only continue to rise from the program’s strong foundation. She hopes that adding the mental preparation to the team’s long-standing mindset training techniques of journaling and reading books will give players another tool to help reach the top of John Wooden’s pyramid of success and be their best when their best is needed.
“It’s a game of mental, it’s not as much physical,” Tinsley said. “If you’re mentally prepared, which is what leveling up helps us do, that does help us achieve competitive greatness at the end of the day.”
Tinsley, the top-ranked pitcher in her recruiting class according to Softball America, is ready to take the mantle as the next UCLA ace. She was named to the Pac-12 all-freshman team with a 1.47 ERA, which included three complete-game shutouts and a no-hitter against Cal State Bakersfield in her college debut.
When Tinsley pauses for her mental preparation, she plays the highlights of her young career before her eyes. It feels like a movie, she said.
The Bruins are hoping to write a Hollywood ending in Oklahoma City.
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With 48 teams competing and a grueling path through the knockout stage, reaching the semifinals of the 2026 FIFA World Cup will be an accomplishment in itself.
Only four nations will survive the tournament’s first 100 matches and earn a spot in the final four, putting themselves within two victories of lifting the most coveted trophy in sports.
Let’s take a look at the latest odds to reach the semifinals at FanDuel Sportsbook as of June 26.
This page may contain affiliate links to legal sports betting partners. If you sign up or place a wager, FOX Sports may be compensated. Read more about Sports Betting on FOX Sports.
To Reach Semifinals
Argentina: +100 (bet $10 to win $20 total)
France: +110 (bet $10 to win $21 total)
Spain: +120 (bet $10 to win $22 total)
England: +165 (bet $10 to win $26.50 total)
Portugal: +210 (bet $10 to win $31 total)
Brazil: +270 (bet $10 to win $37 total)
Netherlands: +300 (bet $10 to win $40 total)
Germany: +330 (bet $10 to win $43 total)
USA: +380 (bet $10 to win $48 total)
Norway: +550 (bet $10 to win $65 total)
Colombia: +600 (bet $10 to win $70 total)
Belgium: +700 (bet $10 to win $80 total)
Morocco: +750 (bet $10 to win $85 total)
Switzerland: +800 (bet $10 to win $90 total)
Mexico: +850 (bet $10 to win $95 total)
Japan: +1200 (bet $10 to win $130 total)
Croatia: +1300 (bet $10 to win $140 total)
Ecuador: +1600 (bet $10 to win $170 total)
Canada: +1700 (bet $10 to win $180 total)
Austria: +1900 (bet $10 to win $200 total)
Here’s what to know about this oddsboard:
The Top 10: Argentina, France, Spain, England, Portugal, Brazil, the Netherlands and Germany — all considered powerhouse countries — stand at the top of the board, with each nation listed at +330 or better to reach the semifinals. But right after that group? The USA and Norway. The Americans have never made it to the semifinals of the World Cup, and this is Norway’s first appearance in the tournament since 1998.
SAN DIEGO — Hodad’s is a third-generation small business, a San Diego treasure that makes a damn good burger. I dropped by one of their two restaurants last winter, but I didn’t see what I wanted on the menu.
The burger I get at Petco Park, I explained to the server. She knew exactly what I meant.
“The F— the Dodgers burger,” she said, with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
In San Diego, it had been an impish inside joke for years. If you didn’t know what FTD meant on the menu at the Hodad’s stands at Petco Park, the burger — with cheese, onion rings, pickles, mayonnaise and barbecue sauce — still was a good time.
When the Dodgers played here last month, a fan posted a picture of the menu board and explained what FTD stood for. The next day, Jomboy Media did the same, in a post with 1.6 million views.
“When I first saw that,” Hodad’s co-owner Shane Hardin told me, “I thought, ‘Oh, sweet, Jomboy, cool. We’ll get a little bump.’ ”
Then Hardin got a call from Delaware North, the company that handles the San Diego Padres’ concessions. People are talking, Hardin was told.
“And I’m like, ‘Cool, great, let ‘em talk, there’s no profanity anywhere,’ ” Hardin said.
The Padres and Delaware North did not see it that way. “FTD” was stripped from the menu boards at the four Hodad’s stands, initially replaced by the lame quartet of “Foul to Dinger,” “For the Division,” “For the Dugout” and “For the Diegans” and currently replaced by the strained quartet of “For the Dads,” “For the Dub,” “Faithful til Death” and (gulp) “Flyball to Deep.”
Another new name for the FTD burger at Petco Park.
(Bill Shaikin / Los Angeles Times)
The Padres declined comment for this column.
Hardin is more amused than annoyed, particularly given the origin of the FTD Burger. It’s been on Hodad’s Petco Park menu since …
“Was it the 2022 playoffs that the Padres beat the Dodgers?” he asked.
This is how a San Diegan tells time, but yes.
“The Padres hit us up and said, ‘We want a special menu item for the playoffs,’” Hardin said. “We go, ‘OK, without us ever saying what it meant, can we call it the FTD Burger?’ They said, ‘Oh, yeah, ha ha, that’s funny, go for it.’ And so we did.”
The burger has been sold at Petco Park ever since, with the same recipe, despite the online conspiracy theory that its three onion rings represented the Dodgers’ three World Series championship rings this decade.
“Dude, I don’t keep track of what the Dodgers have,” Hardin said. “I really don’t care.”
It is in that spirit that I am stunned the Padres made the change.
The San Diego Padres often sell “Beat LA” T-shirts in their team store.
(Bill Shaikin / Los Angeles Times)
The Padres, the team that sells “Beat L.A.” shirts in the team store. The Padres, the team that put up a meme of Clayton Kershaw crying on the video board. The Padres, the team that begged its fans not to sell their tickets to fans of “a team from a little ways up north” and also refused to sell tickets to that 2022 playoff series to anyone in Los Angeles County.
The Padres deserve a ton of credit for breathing life into what now is a feisty rivalry with the Dodgers. It is odd that, all of a sudden, they’re worried about decorum.
“I was under the impression that FTD was just kind of a fun ‘if you know, you know’ sort of thing,” Hardin said. “People will hold up signs saying ‘FTD’ and they’ll get on the JumboTron.
“At the end of the day, Hodad’s is a little rough around the edges. But we’re still a family place.”
Hardin isn’t upset with the Padres. It’s their ballpark, after all, and he enjoys being part of it.
“I love being there,” he said. “The relationship is great, honestly.”
And he had one other thing to say about the demise of the FTD label: “That first homestand after that news broke, we sold 50% more of that burger each game. I’ll take that.”
The Padres might want to reconsider. In baseball, curses are no joking matter, and the Curse of the FTD Burger might now have befallen the team.
When the Dodgers left Petco Park five weeks ago, the Padres were 1½ games behind them. Before the Padres’ next game, the Jomboy post went viral and the “FTD” name vanished.
As the Dodgers return here Friday, the Padres are nine games behind the Dodgers.
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Team USA’s final group stage match in the 2026 FIFA World Cup may not have had any implications for either team, but patriotism was in full force for the home country as Second Lady Usha Vance was among the many prominent figures at Los Angeles Stadium on Thursday night.
As the U.S. national anthem rang across the stadium, with players and fans singing in unison, the FOX Sports broadcast showed Vance in a suite with a huge smile on her face as “The Star-Spangled Banner” ended.
Vance was present at the match just two days after FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced that President Donald Trump would present the World Cup trophy to the winning team at the final in New Jersey on July 19.
U.S. Second Lady Usha Vance attends the 2026 World Cup Group D match between Turkey and the United States at Los Angeles Stadium in Inglewood on June 25, 2026. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
Vance was just the beginning of the stars that showed out in Inglewood, as Paris Hilton was seen presenting the match ball before kick-off. Then, cameras started to pick up the many high-profile faces throughout the crowd.
Among them were Edward Norton and Brad Pitt, a pair that many movie lovers know from their hit classic “Fight Club.” Some social media users even hoped that the discussion they were seen having was about a sequel.
TOM CRUISE, DAVID BECKHAM, KATY PERRY AND MORE CELEBRITIES SPOTTED AT 2026 FIFA WORLD CUP MATCHES
Also, movie star Ashton Kutcher was seen speaking with Los Angeles Rams standout wide receiver Puka Nacua, who knows the confines of SoFi Stadium (what it is called outside of FIFA play) very well.
Then, Colin Farrell, though Irish born, was rocking a replica Team USA jersey alongside his son in the stands to support the Stars and Stripes. Leonardo DiCaprio, Scottie Pippen and more were also seen in the seats.
U.S. Second Lady Usha Vance sings the anthem during the 2026 World Cup Group D match between Turkey and the U.S. at Los Angeles Stadium in Inglewood on June 25, 2026. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
There has been a tremendous outpouring of support for the USMNT from everywhere, celebrity or not, throughout this tournament. The 4-2 win over Paraguay at the same Los Angeles stadium caused a frenzy in the stands, as the U.S. made a statement to begin the tournament on home soil for the first time since 1999.
USA WORLD CUP TEAM CLINCHES SPOT IN KNOCKOUT STAGE AFTER ANOTHER HISTORIC PERFORMANCE VS AUSTRALIA
Then, it was on to Seattle, where a 2-0 victory over Australia not only led to a spot in the knockout round, but led to a bellowing of the John Denver classic, “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” from everyone in the stands. The USMNT saluted their fans after yet another successful match.
It was a much different look for the USMNT entering Thursday night’s matchup against Türkiye, with nine changes to the starting XI after the team had already secured its place in the knockout stage. The Americans will face Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Round of 32 on July 1.
Paris Hilton is seen with children before the FIFA World Cup 2026 Group D match between Türkiye and USA at Los Angeles Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., on June 25, 2026. (Sarah Stier/FIFA)
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No matter who’s on the pitch, some of the biggest names in the country are showing support for the team that has inspired tremendous national pride to kick off this tournament.
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