In Reply to: Another Skipper Article: ESPN posted by Punahou on October 20, 2025 at 11:52:52
Kind of Wooden-teaching-how-to-tie-your-shoes-esque. :-)
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Consistency has been key to Skipper's life in coaching since his first job as a defensive backs coach at Western New Mexico in 2001. But once he was placed in charge of this UCLA team, he knew that a kind of transformation was necessary. Before he even attempted to fix anything football-specific, however, Skipper saw two immediate priorities off the field.
"We cleaned the locker room," Skipper said. "Every time I went to visit another place -- whether it's a college team, NFL team, even high schools and recruiting -- the winning teams always had a nice, clean locker room."
The task was simple and put the onus on the players, while the ultimate purpose of the exercise was to give the Bruins something tangible to both achieve and celebrate.
"The first thing Coach Skip said when he got the interim job is, 'We got to celebrate the small successes.' So let's start with the locker room, let's clean the locker room," said tight end Hudson Habermehl. "That's one win. Let's celebrate that win. And it just piles on. It's like a snowball effect."
For the first two weeks after instituting the new clean locker rule, Skipper would have someone take a picture of the locker room at day's end to ensure players had followed through and also to remind them of their accomplishment. Now, it has become a habit he no longer has to worry about.