LOS ANGELES — Cori Close walked into Violet, a French cafe on Glendon Avenue, just a 15-minute walk from the UCLA campus in Westwood Village – diagonal glass windows angled above the seats within the bistro’s urban European architecture interior.
Across from the longtime Bruins coach sat Charlisse Leger-Walker, the sixth-year graduate student point guard about to start her first and final season playing on the Pauley Pavilion hardwood. There was a purpose in their meeting.
Close joked that when you’re the head coach, the players usually don’t want to spend time with you outside of essential team activities, opting to hang out with assistant coaches if player-coach time is on the table.
But with Leger-Walker, the experience she brings to the Bruins’ roster as the oldest player on the team – and the Bruin with the most experience through her four seasons at Washington State, often a thorn in the side of UCLA – and via international basketball, Close knew a tight-knit bond with the New Zealand-born veteran was a necessity.
“I knew that I wanted to, and I needed to have a really good connection with Charlisse,” Close remembers thinking. “I wanted to be able to hand the keys to a lot of things to take advantage of what she brings to the table. I need to build that relationship.”
Such a bond – between a coach who once had to attempt to halt Leger-Walker’s clutch gameplay and the do-it-all guard who’d keep Close up at night – could pay dividends in the 2025-2026 season. Leger-Walker will help lead a UCLA backcourt operation alongside senior guard Kiki Rice, one that’s made her the “team mom” on the floor at all times.
Or maybe, Leger-Walker provides even a little more wisdom than a motherly figure would.
“We call her a great-grandma,” Bruins redshirt sophomore Amanda Muse said.
Leger-Walker, 24, has lived through the deafening highs, winning Pac-12 Freshman of the Year and leading the Cougars to a Pac-12 Tournament title in 2023 as the seventh seed, defeating UCLA in the championship contest. Across her four years at Washington State, Leger-Walker averaged 16.6 points, 5.6 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 1.7 steals per game – building a reputation as one of the more prolific players on the West Coast.
She also lived the sunken lows, the aches and the bruises, suffering a torn ACL in her senior season in Pullman, Washington. As the conference dissolved into the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC, questions lingered of how the future would look. The injury knocked out her final 11 games at Washington State as the Cougars finished in the bottom half of the conference and missed an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.
“You’ve been an elite athlete your whole life, and now I’m teaching myself how to walk again,” Leger-Walker told the Southern California News Group in a wide-ranging interview.
It wasn’t just on American soil where Leger-Walker felt the hurt. New Zealand women’s basketball – looking to secure its first Olympic berth since 2004, when Leger-Walker’s mother, Leanne Walker, was on the team – fell short of its goal without Charlisse Leger-Walker on the roster.
“That was about to be a turning point for New Zealand,” Leger-Walker said.
In New Zealand’s game against Puerto Rico at the 2024 FIBA Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournaments in Xi’an, China, the Kiwi team lost by two points. Leger-Walker’s mind sways back to the final score, 69-67, and her torn ACL, potentially the difference between New Zealand returning to the world stage.
“I think I’m good for two points,” she said. “So it was just really heartbreaking in the sense that one, I couldn’t be there and help my team qualify, and also that they were that close.”
In many ways, Leger-Walker’s route back to the Olympics in 2028 – which will take place in Los Angeles – starts now in Westwood, one of the homes of the Olympic Village when the world descends on Southern California in fewer than three years.
“If I could play in the (2028 Olympics), I feel like everything was just meant to happen,” she said. “I’m basically a local now.”
She is a local now. Leger-Walker said she loves strolling down Venice and Santa Monica, the beach her preferred place of serenity. The New Zealander loves tacos and Mexican food – of which there’s no lack of as she adjusts to Year Two as an Angeleno – and turned back to one place in particular as her favorite: Violet.
French food shared between Close and Leger-Walker remains at the heart of the Bruins in 2025.
“If you were to ask every single person on a team who’s someone on your toughest days that you really look to, they’re all going to say Charlisse,” Close said. “I just think it’s a tremendous compliment to her character.”
At Big Ten Media Day in Chicago, Leger-Walker often stood off to the side, creating TikTok videos and social media content of Rice and senior center Lauren Betts.
A coach off the floor, Leger-Walker has become the glue of a roster with no shortage of leaders, Close said. The coach recalled a phone call she had with Leanne Walker, not just Leger-Walker’s mother but her mentor, about her daughter’s leadership.
“There will come a time when you just hand the clipboard over to her and say, ‘What do you think?’” Walker told Close.
She wasn’t wrong.
In a recent practice, Close and associate head coach Tony Newnan handed the reins over to Leger-Walker during a “special situation” drill. Close tasked Leger-Walker with choosing and explaining the play – how it would be executed and why – with a specific lineup currently in the practice rotation.
UCLA converted the play, just as Leger-Walker stated it would.
She chose UCLA more than a year ago for the community and the medical care that the Bruins could offer across the board. Leger-Walker is a metaphorical sedative on the court for her teammates, her experience slowing down the team’s heart rate, Close said.
National championship aspirations await for Leger-Walker – something the 5-foot-10 guard said she has never experienced as a player – and so do a little bit of first-game nerves. Leger-Walker has calculated the wait.
It’ll be 650 days since her torn ACL when No. 3 UCLA takes on San Diego State on Monday at Honda Center. And the elder Bruin – leading an offense where Rice and Betts will carry much of the noise – cannot wait.
“It’s all very, very much a pinch-me moment,” Leger-Walker said.