Foster Got Everything He Wanted Out of UCLA’s Costa Mesa Camp
UCLA’s two-week stay in Costa Mesa, CA, to kick off fall camp is officially coming to an end, and Bruins coach DeShaun Foster, whose idea it was to take camp off campus, was pleased with how his team came out of it.
“Yeah, most definitely,” Foster said during Saturday’s media availability on whether he got everything he wanted out of their stay. “I just feel like the team has come together. We really wanted to use this time to just get away and regroup. Losing as many people as I lost last year, just seniors, was 42, and then bringing in a whole new team, I wanted us to really come together and I think we did that.”
Much of Foster’s team-building came off the field. From staying in a hotel, mismatching offensive and defensive roommates, installing a no-phone curfew, to holding intense “brotherhood meetings’ that challenged everyone’s vulnerability, UCLA is coming out of this stay a closer, more connected team.
Foster made it a point to takeĀ UCLA’s fall camp off-site in Costa Mesa for one thing — bringing the team closer together.
Between mismatching offensive and defensive roommates and encouraging players to eat with each other every meal, a new practice has been revealed out of camp — “brotherhood meetings.”
Bruins kicker Matten Bhaghani revealed the nightly practice duringĀ Wednesday’s media availability.
“Coach Fos has done a great job instilling brotherhood in us,” the junior kicker said. “We have ‘brotherhood meetings’ damn near almost every night. Compared to last year, the team is so much closer and you can really talk to anybody. He’s reall done a great job getting all the boys meshed together and ready to go.”
So, what are these “brotherhood meetings?”
Nov 23, 2024; Pasadena, California, USA; UCLA Bruins place kicker Mateen Bhaghani (94) high fives head coach DeShaun Foster after hitting a first quarter field goal against the USC Trojans at Rose Bowl. Mandatory Credit: Robert Hanashiro-Imagn Images / Robert Hanashiro-Imagn Images
Bhaghani explained, “A ‘brotherhood meeting’ is, basically, where we’ll have one of the coaching staff, every night, give their backstory and what they feel is brotherhood and what is their ‘why?’ And then we’ll break up into little groups and talk about our own ‘whys?’ and why we play football and kid of just getting to learn about your other teammates.”
It’s not too common for a team to be off campus during camp, but Foster tapped into his NFL days, where training camp was almost always somewhere else. Bhaghani thinks all of this connection and progression on the field is a result of being off-site.
“Being away from campus is amazing,” he said. “It gets rid of all distractions. All you can focus on is football and the day-to-day and just getting better every day. Just learning about your teammates and really developing relationships with them.”
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