Spring Sing performers sang many of their own original songs, but Bruin Harmony won the top prize with their cover of John Mayer’s “Gravity.”
Baseball has strong performance pitching and hitting to take down Washington 8-3
The Bruins relied on the strikeout early and often to earn a victory.
No. 1 UCLA baseball (43-8, 20-5 Pac-12) defeated Washington (28-20, 12-13) 8-3 to take the first game of the series Friday night at Jackie Robinson Stadium. The Bruins’ pitchers combined to strike out a season-high 19 batters to kick off their last regular season home series.
Junior right-hander Ryan Garcia made his first 10 outs via the strikeout. Garcia struck out 13 of the 15 batters he retired over five innings – one short of tying his career-high of 14 he set over nine innings of work against Utah on April 26.
“It’s the old Nolan Ryan rule,” said coach John Savage. “It’s not a lot of innings, it’s a lot of pitches and a lot of strikeouts.”
Garcia allowed three runs – one earned – on three hits and three walks and improved his record to 8-0.
The junior said he was frustrated his high pitch count resulted in getting pulled after five innings and 112 pitches.
“The strikeouts are nice, but I would rather go longer in the game,” Garcia said. “Getting cut short five innings is a little frustrating, but I’ll take the performance overall.”
Right-handers sophomore Michael Townsend, redshirt senior Nathan Hadley, junior Kyle Mora and junior Felix Rubi each pitched an inning of scoreless relief. They added one, two, two and one strikeouts, respectively.
The Bruins did their most offensive damage in the second, when sophomore left fielder Garrett Mitchell hit a bases-clearing triple with two outs and the bases loaded. The game was tied 1-1 before he gave UCLA a lead it would not relinquish for the rest of the night.
Mitchell also scored the first run of the game when he came home on an RBI single by junior shortstop Ryan Kreidler in the first.
The sophomore was invited to play this summer for the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team earlier this week. He will join Trevor Bauer, Gerrit Cole, Brandon Crawford and Troy Glaus, among others, as the 18th UCLA player to sport the red, white and blue.
“It’s been a dream of mine to play for Team USA,” Mitchell said. “It makes you realize all the hard work that you’ve been putting in and all the long hours throughout the year for this moment.”
With the Bruins leading 1-0, the Huskies put up their first run in the second when shortstop Ramon Bramasco singled, advanced from first to third on a wild pitch, and crossed home on another wild pitch by Garcia.
Washington cut the lead to 4-3 in the fifth when junior first baseman Michael Toglia made a wide throw to Garcia at first that went into the outfield, allowing two runners to score.
“It was an awkward play,” Garcia said. “I had to turn my back while finding the base. (Toglia) kind of fumbled with it in the beginning, so the timing was off.”
The Bruins got one of those unearned runs back in the bottom of the frame when senior designated hitter Jake Pries hit an RBI double down the left field line to make it a 5-3 UCLA lead.
Mitchell slapped his second triple of the night in the sixth, bringing home freshman catcher Noah Cardenas and scoring later on a sac-fly by Kreidler. It marked the first time in over three years a Bruin notched two triples in a game.
Cardenas produced the Bruins’ eighth run with an RBI single to right in the seventh. The freshman leads the team and is second in the Pac-12 with a .410 batting average.
The Bruins have the chance to win the series tonight at 7 p.m.
Softball smothers Weber State in no-hitter to begin Los Angeles Regional
There were 12 hits in total Friday night and the Bruins had all of them.
No. 2 seed UCLA softball (47-5, 20-4 Pac-12) secured a 6-0 win in its opening game in the Los Angeles Regional over Weber State (26-20, 14-2 Big Sky) behind a combined no-hitter from redshirt junior Rachel Garcia and sophomore Holly Azevedo.
“Game one in the postseason is always the biggest game,” said coach Kelly Inouye-Perez. “We did not play our best ball tonight, but we used our speed and got stronger throughout the game. Rachel clearly dominated in the circle and was just being Rachel Garcia.”
Garcia got the start and turned in six perfect innings with 13 strikeouts – including eight straight between the second and fourth innings. The Wildcats saw first pitch strikes in all but three at-bats and never saw a count with three balls.
Garcia was pulled after the sixth inning with her perfect game still intact, as Inouye-Perez made the move to go to Azevedo.
“We’re in it to win this regional tournament,” Inouye-Perez said. “(Garcia’s) pitch count was up and she’s starting tomorrow. There are a lot of opportunities for her to get all the accolades, but she told me it’s about winning and making sure our staff can win this weekend.”
Azevedo came in relief in the seventh, but surrendered Weber State’s first base runner of the game when Takesha Saltern reached second base on a throwing error by Perez. She settled down, though, retiring the next three batters by a pop out to right and two strikeouts to secure the Bruins’ win.
At the plate, UCLA scored in the first and sixth innings behind 12 hits from seven different players. Sophomore infielders Briana Perez and Kinsley Washington led the way with three hits apiece.
Junior utility Bubba Nickles led off with a double and was able to score off an errant throw after Perez laid down a bunt in the opening frame. Garcia helped herself out with a sacrifice fly to center for the early 2-0 lead.
The Bruins got back to being the first team to score first after Arizona drew first blood in the last two games of their matchup last weekend.
Garcia said the series against Arizona helped UCLA press the reset button before the postseason, and at the same time, use it as motivation.
“Sometimes you just need that loss to pump you up more,” Garcia said. “But we did reset as a team and I look at it as a positive. We’ve seen (Arizona) before and we’ll probably see them again and it’s good for us either way for the postseason.”
UCLA piled on some more insurance runs in the sixth inning.
Freshman catcher Colleen Sullivan led off the inning with a single and scored on Washington’s RBI triple to center. Freshman utility Kelli Godin drove in Washington on a single up the middle and Nickles doubled to right center, bringing in another two runs. Perez’s third hit of the game drove in the Bruins’ fourth run of the inning for the 6-0 lead and what would be the final score.
Next up for UCLA is Missouri, a team it beat 11-3 earlier this season, at 3 p.m. on Saturday.
“It’s a day-by-day process from here on out,” said senior catcher Paige Halstead. “We have to keep working hard and not listen to the noise.”
A cappella group Bruin Harmony takes top prize at Spring Sing 2019
This post was updated on May 21 at 8:53 a.m.
Bruin Harmony won best a cappella group at last year’s Spring Sing and returned victorious, taking the top prize of the night.
Bruin Harmony’s soft pop cover of John Mayer’s “Gravity” won both the UCLA Prytanean Alumnae Award for best a cappella and the Northern California Alumni Grand Sweepstakes Award. The panel of 10 celebrity judges – including former Disney actress Olesya Rulin, season 21 Bachelor Nick Viall and the lead singer of Young the Giant – chose the all-male group out of the 17 acts.
“‘Gravity’ best represents where we are all in our lives,” said Will Nazareno, a Bruin Harmony member. “We’re in this weird transition period of life where we’re lost and we need this guiding light to help us, and that really resonated with us.”
Nazareno, a fourth-year music performance student, said he focused on developing the group’s artistry while arranging the piece by emphasizing the song’s narrative. Rather than relying solely on the technical aspects of the song, he said Bruin Harmony found success as a group through their sense of camaraderie.
Using a combination of falsetto and belted notes, the group’s low-toned harmonies paralleled the song’s message about life’s hardships, as represented by gravity. The group accentuated spatial relationships by organizing themselves in two intersecting circles that converged at the back of the stage while the soloist sang center stage.
Jahanvi Srinivasan and Matheus Gorski won Best Overall Participation. Best Group Director went to Random Voice’s leader Malena Cherreton. Outspoken took home the UCLA Affiliates Award for best dance group and Ulani Mafate and Kevin Jang won the Rose Bowl Bruins Award for best duet.
Second-year English and music performance student Nina Marie Rose took home the UCLA Mortar Board Award for best solo. Her original composition “The Raven” discussed moving on after heart-wrenching breakup through metaphorical lyrics such as “I am like a thought in passing / never to be spoken.” As she sang, the audience lit Pauley Pavilion up with their phone flashlights.
Jazz, funk and rock band TAXI took home the Bruin Choice Award and UCLA Las Doñas Award for Best Band for their original number “Dancin’ on the Roof.” The male-comprised group played the electric guitar, piano, drums and a saxophone in their up-tempo song. Sporting black, white and yellow to reflect their name, the group’s old-school rock influences matched lead singer and fourth-year communication student Nick Nikoian’s request for the audience to dance along.
As the audience danced along with them, TAXI vocalists showcased their own dance skills alongside their musical performance. Stepping side to side while snapping, the band closed the show on a more upbeat note than the other performers.
“This isn’t an artistic experience, it’s a life experience,” said Nathaniel Harris, a second-year music composition student who played keyboard for the band. “I made a lot of brothers out of this performance, not just friends.”
Sketch group Company took the stage between each act. In their Sasan Ahoraian Company Award winning skit, “Grapes and Egg,” the group played upon Kerckhoff Coffeehouse’s unconventional combination dish. The skit featured singing employees in propeller hats, colorful streamers and cast members in homemade grape costumes. At the end of the skit, they presented each judge with their very own plastic container filled with grapes and an egg as a midshow snack.
Having been exposed to the university’s distinct food traditions as well as a sketch misconstruing the UCLA eight clap, the judges left Pauley Pavilion with a brief insight into daily life on campus. As the ceremony drew to a close, “Once Upon a Time” actress Bailee Madison joked about her experience judging the night’s competitors.
“I haven’t been to college, but I feel like I did today,” Madison said.
Road to Spring Sing: Bruin Harmony
With the prestigious Spring Sing 2019 around the corner, Daily Bruin gets an exclusive look into one of UCLA’s most diverse groups Bruin Harmony and how they keep their brotherhood strong and united.
Results announced for North Westwood Neighborhood Council’s first full-term election
The North Westwood Neighborhood Council held an election at John Wooden Center on Thursday to determine the members of its first full-term council.
The NWWNC represents the UCLA campus, the North Village and Westwood Village to the Los Angeles City Council. The NWWNC selected council members for their interim board in October following a vote to subdivide the jurisdiction of Westwood last May. All council members elected Thursday will serve a two-year term from 2019 to 2021, as per council bylaws.
Twenty-six candidates ran for 19 seats, five more than the selection in October. Four previous council members did not run in this election.
Election results are unofficial until Wednesday, after a challenge period has ended. During this period, the validity of the election can be challenged, which could result in disqualification of votes or candidates if a challenge is issued and found valid.
One at-large stakeholder seat is currently unfilled. Michael Skiles, newly elected council member and former president of the council, said a candidate initially applied for the seat but later withdrew. The new council will select a candidate to fill the seat, he added.
Four elected council members did not previously hold seats on the council.
The next monthly meeting of the NWWNC will be held June 5 from 7:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. in the Weyburn Commons Village View Room. Officers of the board will be elected at the meeting.
Results:
Homeowner stakeholder
Kaveh Navab
Renter stakeholder
1. Michael Skiles
2. Katja May
General resident stakeholder
1. Grayson Peters
2. Ashraf Beshay
Business stakeholder
1. Kevin Crummy
2. Josh Trifunovic
3. Alex Helmi
Worker stakeholder
Alisha Ranadive
Undergraduate student member
1. Nahian Arfin
2. Joey Russel
Graduate student Member
Paul Kurek
University staff or administrative member
Wren Reynolds,
Faculty member
Ryan Snyder
Organizational stakeholder
1. Andrew Lewis
2. Ernesto Arciniega
At-large stakeholder
1. Amir Tarighat
2. Zahra Hajee
3. No candidate
Season ends for women’s tennis as it’s unable to get past North Carolina in NCAAs
The Bruins accomplished what no team had done all season – take the doubles point from the Tar Heels.
But they still came up short.
No. 7 seed UCLA women’s tennis (21-8, 8-2 Pac-12) was toppled by No. 2 seed North Carolina (33-1, 14-0 ACC) 4-1 in the quarterfinals of the NCAA championship in Orlando, Florida. Coach Stella Sampras Webster’s squad lost by an identical score line to North Carolina in the ITA Team Indoors Championships quarterfinals.
Coming into the match, the Bruins had won 16 straight doubles points while the Tar Heels had won all 31 double points this season.
The teams split the matches on doubles courts one and two.
The duo of sophomore Abi Altick and freshman Taylor Johnson went down a break early but fought back to force a tiebreak to decide the opening point. The teams traded the first seven points of the tiebreaker before UCLA’s No. 82 pair took a two-point lead at 5-3.
“Me and (Johnson) did a good job of staying in there and fighting a really tough team,” Altick said. “It was super close throughout the tiebreaker. We were mentally strong and kept being aggressive.”
Altick and Johnson held on to win the tiebreaker 8-6, sending the Tar Heels into singles play with a deficit for the first time all season.
“The doubles point was just as tight in the indoors (match) as it was today,” Sampras Webster said. “Today, it went our way.”
North Carolina’s singles lineup boasted three top-20 players, while UCLA’s highest ranked player was No. 32 freshman Elysia Bolton.
UCLA only won two of the six first sets and relinquished the lead after senior Gabby Andrews managed to win only one game in two sets on court six. Shortly thereafter, senior Alaina Miller fell 6-2, 6-3 on court four.
Bolton was up 4-1 in the second set on court two after dropping the first set but lost the next five games to give the Tar Heels a 3-1 lead.
Senior Ayan Broomfield was knotted at three games apiece after losing the first set on court three but lost the next three games to send North Carolina to its third-ever Final Four appearance.
“We had good energy throughout the entire tournament and going into the match,” said redshirt junior Jada Hart. “They started off really strong on four of the six courts and kept that going throughout the remainder of the match.”
Altick was sitting on three match points on court four and Hart was leading in the third set on the top court when play concluded, indicating a closer match than the scoreboard suggested.
“Couple of them were not great matchups for us but you’ve got to give it to them,” Sampras Webster said. “They came out in singles and really played disciplined tennis and we weren’t able to maintain that high level. They were just better.”
UNC will face No. 3-seeded Stanford (26-1, 10-0 Pac-12) on Saturday at 11 a.m. in Orlando.