LOS ANGELES -
In his time as UCLA’s head football coach, Bob Chesney has made it clear that he doesn’t just define success by wins and losses.
“Success looks like a united disciplined group that continues to grow every moment that they have,” he said during Big Ten Media Day on July 29. “I want to lead the nation in development.”
At UCLA’s own Media Day on Wednesday, various Bruins coaches and players shared their own thoughts on this philosophy and how to translate it into the best season possible.
“The process leads to wins and losses,” defensive coordinator Colin Hitschler said. “I think that mentality, that brand that we’re talking about, that fight for every inch, as long as you’re doing that, if the scoreboard comes up with a loss, doesn’t mean that you didn’t win the game from how you prepared and how you played. Every great team I’ve been a part of lost a game or two in a season. Doesn’t mean we didn’t fight like hell and come out on top at the end of the season.”
“How you feel about yourself, how I can look myself in the mirror and say, ‘How did I play that Saturday?’” wide receiver Mikey Matthews said. “Just stuff like that. [I’m] definitely just giving it my all every day.”
Throughout the roster and coaching staff, the Bruins emphasized the importance of focusing on small details throughout their work with the team.
“I think every good team focuses on the details, and the details are what lead to success on Saturdays,” Hitschler said. “I don’t know any other way. I guess that’s just how I was brought up within the industry. But you got to focus on takeaways and the little things that matter big on Saturdays.”
Unsurprisingly, this attitude starts at practice, and has spanned virtually every aspect of both spring and fall camp in Westwood.
“Just small wins by the day,” running back Wayne Knight said. “Whether it’s [individual] drills or whether it’s team periods. They all stack up on each other, and if you stack so many of those, you create a great culture. And I feel like that’s what Chesney does a great job of, just having that competitive environment and just making sure that everyone’s on the same page and [has] that winning mentality.”
For Chesney, however, that concept even goes beyond the football field. He has put emphasis on how his players conduct themselves as people, such as making sure they know the names of members of the support staff.
Chesney and the rest of the team hope this applies not only to the players and coaches, but throughout the program.
“We talk about how you do one thing is how you do everything, and it’s no different from the staff,” offensive coordinator Dean Kennedy said. “It’s no different from the equipment staff. It’s no different from the people who help clean the building. It’s everybody that pours into this program.”
UCLA is less than three weeks away from opening their season on the road against Cal. Even if they aren’t defining success by wins and losses, they obviously want to win games. The nighttime showdown in Berkeley marks their first chance to take this focus on details and process over results and turn it into a victory.
“It’s not what we do, it’s how we do it,” linebacker Scott Taylor said. “I think the whole team’s kind of adopted that mindset, and it’s showing up in things like walkthroughs and OTAs and lifting sessions and stuff like that. You don’t think about it as, ‘Oh, this is just a rep in a walkthrough.’ It’s like, ‘No, this could be the game-changing play against Cal in a couple weeks.’ So it’s really having that hyperfocus in everything that we do that I think is going to set us apart.”