The Bond Between Bruins and How The Betts Sisters Found Theirs
Lauren Betts is one of the top women's college basketball players while her sister, Sienna, is one of the top high school recruits. How they found their joy together as they reunite at UCLA next year.
The walls of the Grandview High School gym tell stories. On the south end, state champions are immortalized on large banners, the title seasons stitched into the fabric. The wall over the bleachers is papered with placards honoring league winners, each team with their own unique story. But on the north side of the gym, flanked off to the right of a large painting of a wolf tearing through the brick wall, are about a dozen black banners hanging vertically. They honor the Gatorade Players of the Year in Colorado and if you look closely enough, you’ll see the name ‘Betts’ more than a few times.
First Lauren, twice, and then her sister Sienna, soon to be three times.
While it feels narratively right to frame it that way — Lauren paving the way followed by her younger sister — the reality is that the two Betts women charted their own paths independently before coming back together. What started as a sibling rivalry has now become an unbreakable bond between sisters. And soon, it may become one of the most dominant frontcourt tandems in NCAA women’s basketball.
The Betts’ & Basketball
The Betts kids have always been athletes. It’s sort of baked into the calculus when your father, Andy, was an All-Big West first team selection at Long Beach State while your mother, Michelle, won a 1993 national championship in volleyball — and later played with a young woman from Costa Mesa named Misty May — at the same school. But, in many ways, sports became something of a paradox in the Betts household. It was a tie that bound Lauren, Sienna and their younger brother Dylan but it also drove them apart.
“Basketball was just a really sensitive topic for all of us because we were just so competitive, and it just leads to fights,” Sienna says with a chuckle. “Especially being the younger one to a really accomplished older sibling, I think [Lauren] was my fire to just keep fighting and keep improving.”
For Michelle and Andy, the balancing act came in multiple facets. Here were their three children, all athletic and showing signs of inheriting their father’s height and their mother’s reflexes. The two were separated and co-parenting would be key in providing stability as their children progressed. But it was likely that they’d all gravitate towards one or two sports specifically and the constant battle was how to guide them to live their own way without feeling like they were in the others’ shadow.
“We never wanted to put any of our kids in a box and say, ‘well this is how this person did it,’” Michelle explains. “We tried our best to let the kids do what was best for them individually.”
Lauren, as it happened, enjoyed dancing, having picked it up in Spain where the family lived in her early childhood while Andy played professionally in Europe. When she arrived stateside at 8 years old, she swam and played soccer. But basketball quickly became her primary interest. By age 16, Lauren was 6’7, had already been selected to the Team USA U16 national team and helped lead Grandview to a 5A Colorado High School state championship game.
It was around this time that Sienna was making her own choice. She quit soccer in seventh grade, realizing that her future path would be in basketball as well. But it also carried with it its’ own burden: being known as Lauren’s younger sister.
Names & Shadows
By the time the Betts sisters played high school basketball together at Grandview, Lauren was already a household name among women’s hoops fans. She was the number one high school recruit in the country, had committed to a Stanford program just one year removed from a national championship, and still chasing her first CHSAA state title.
Despite the many accolades that she had over the course of her high school career, that title remained elusive. She lost as a freshman to Cherry Creek and future Cardinal teammate Jana Van Gytenbeek, the Pandemic took away her chance as a sophomore and Grandview was upset in the CHSAA Final Four one year later.
Her last shot to cement her high school legacy was to win as a senior with her sister on the team.
Sounds like something out of a movie, right?
“I think her senior year, when I was a freshman was the roughest year ever,” says Sienna. “We were around each other all day at school and we’re both just so competitive in life and I think we’re both jealous of different attributes, attributes that we each have.”
Indeed, the two are very different. Sienna is brash, upfront and plays with the chip that every younger sibling inherently keeps on their shoulder whether they wear it or not. Lauren, even now at UCLA, is a steadier head that occasionally is able to dig into a more fiery side. Off the floor, Lauren is something of a social butterfly, going out with friends and meeting new people. Sienna, is a bit of a foodie and could burn a few hours hanging in a coffee shop enjoying poetry, for instance. The divergence in personalities was something Michelle noticed in high school, particularly on the floor.
“You could say they play the same positions [but] they don’t play the same at all,” she explains.
In spite of those differences on the floor, there were some fun moments where that bond of sisterhood shined through. Both Lauren and Sienna remember a particular winter night before the pandemic when they were in high school where the nickname ‘Snow Patrol’ was born.
“Me, Lauren and [Grandview classmate and teammate] Marya [Hudgins] were like a trio, basically my whole life,” recalls Sienna. “And that night, they were so bored and we were all in the basement. They wanted to sneak out, which was the dumbest idea ever.”
So Sienna stood guard while Lauren and Marya trudged over an hour in the snow to walk to a friends house, where that friend took a car to drive to their father Andy’s house.
“The girl is not 16 yet!” Michelle adds. “And this knucklehead — they’re all three knuckleheads — takes her parents car. She has no license, and she takes it in the snow to drive them back to [Lauren & Sienna’s] Dad’s house.”
Stupid and reckless? In hindsight, yes. The type of traditional teenage hijinks many have found themselves engaged in? Most likely.
But it was Sienna’s actions that night that reminded Lauren that she had a real one in her younger sister.
“I basically went around the house making sure no one knew they were gone for the night,” she says.
“Sienna did help,” adds Lauren, trying to stifle laughter.
Those little moments helped bring levity to tougher times. While Sienna found herself living in the shadow of her accomplished older sister, Lauren was having to handle the pressures and difficulties of being a family standard bearer. Sometimes, those stresses projected outwards and towards each other.
Grandview would indeed go on to win the 2022 state championship, Lauren’s first and only CHSAA title. Within a few months, she’d be headed off to Palo Alto to join forces with Cameron Brink, Haley Jones and Kiki Iriafen.
And, over the course of two years and separated by roughly a thousand miles, Sienna and Lauren found themselves and eventually each other again.
Age & Wisdom
Lauren’s freshman year at Stanford wasn’t quite the dream it was billed to be. On paper, all signs pointed towards the Cardinal having a historically dominant frontcourt that could stand up to South Carolina’s budding juggernaut led by Player of the Year Aliyah Boston.
But quickly, things went sideways. Lauren played just under ten minutes per game as a freshman, her confidence began to waver and the rigidity of Tara Vanderveer’s system took a toll on players that might not have fit their role to the letter. Michelle watched her daughter and started to see shades of her own journey in Lauren’s.
“I went to a school that was preseason number one, right out of high school,” she says, reflecting on her time at Long Beach State. “There were a lot of things that went really poorly my freshman year and I stayed and sucked it up because I refused to come back home. I didn’t want to look like I tried to achieve my dream and I failed. So I sucked it up and it was the most difficult four years of my life.”
Knowing the perils of falling out of love with the game and the effect it can have on self-confidence in everyday life even long after the playing days are done, Michelle realized that her daughter needed to make a decision away from basketball. One that helped the person first.
“There were a lot of emotions involved, and I knew for myself that I couldn’t do that for four years,” Lauren told The Athletic in 2023.
So she decided to shock the college basketball world and transfer after her freshman year. Every school in the country was ready to offer anything and everything to get Lauren to sign. The most important thing she was looking for was a coach that seemed to understand her as a person. To that end, few seemed to get her the way UCLA head coach Cori Close did. One now famous story concerns a team dinner in Los Angeles with the Betts family where Close was asked by her own players what it would take for her to jump into her pool fully clothed on a chilly Los Angeles night. She told everyone at the table a commitment from Lauren would do it.
Before the night was done, Cori Close leapt into her pool, clothes and all.
While Lauren struggled to gain a foothold at Stanford and tested the transfer portal, Sienna was starting to figure out life as her own person. While she was still known in some corners as carrying the legacy set forth by her big sister, the name ‘Sienna Betts’ was taking on a life of its’ own. As a sophomore, she led Grandview to another CHSAA state title and became a Colorado Gatorade Player of the Year. Quickly, she shot up high school recruiting rankings and became one of the most coveted players in the country.
“I knew she was never gonna settle with whatever she had her freshman year,” Lauren says of her sister. “She was gonna continue to get better and better and better each year.”
“And obviously,” she adds, with a wry smile, “I was right.”
But Sienna’s journey of self discovery hit a roadblock when she found out Lauren transferred to UCLA, a school Sienna was already committed to. Suddenly, all the progress made in forging her own identity hit a dead stop. For a moment, she found herself right back in her freshman year of high school having to be known as Lauren’s sister.
“I told [the UCLA coaches] that I really wanted to go there and I told them I did not want to play with Lauren,” she explains. “But they told me ‘just give it time’ and then eventually I just got more used to the idea of us playing together.”
What helped turn Sienna’s opinion around was watching her older sister rediscover her love for the game.
It wasn’t easy. Lauren herself would tell you that. The wounds from her time at Stanford ran so deep that it took almost a whole 2024 season to help her get back on her feet mentally. During Pac-12 play that year, she took four games away from the team to talk to a sports psychologist and work on finding her voice again.
From one season to the next, the difference was clear. Lauren is now more demanding of the ball when she has position in the post. She lets out a roar that shakes the gym when earning an And-1. And, perhaps most importantly, she’s found her happiness playing basketball again. Despite whatever sibling rivalries may have existed in the past, Sienna has found her own peace in her identity and now longs to see her older sister shine and enjoy herself while doing it.
“You can just see how she plays on the court,” Sienna says of Lauren, “like watching her freshman year — the minutes when she was in each game — compared to now, when you can tell in how she plays. It’s just really nice to see that the people she has around her at UCLA have created such a great personality for her.”
Hoop & Harmony
Nowadays, Sienna and Lauren are tight as can be. Both have found their own voices, their own passions and their own defined sense of self. No longer is Sienna solely a younger sister and no longer is Lauren a hyped player with massive expectations still to meet.
Grandview High School will stitch another year into the state champion banner for women’s basketball. Sienna helped bring the Wolves their third title in four years while becoming the Colorado high school all-time rebounding leader for boys and girls basketball. She also won her third Colorado Gatorade Player of the Year honor, becoming just the third women’s basketball player in state history to accomplish the feat.
Lauren is the indispensable centerpiece of the number one overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, guiding UCLA to a Big Ten Tournament Championship while being discussed as one of the frontrunners for National Player of the Year honors.
“I’m having a lot of fun,” Lauren says after a January practice in the Mo Osling Center at UCLA. “Obviously you can tell. I think it just shows in the way I’m playing. I think you can see too, my face when I’m playing. I just really am surrounded by the best people every single day.”
The skepticism about joining forces has now turned to excitement and anticipation. And Sienna, after years of resisting the concept, looks back on that year at Grandview and is looking forward to running it back with the benefit of age and wisdom.
“I didn't realize how special that was,” she says, “And to look back, I miss it so much, being able to play with her. Even if I didn't like it at the time, it was such a special thing. I think it makes this time so much more special and I'm so excited to be able to do that with her.”
For Lauren, the feeling is mutual.
“I think about moments,” she adds. “Like when we beat South Carolina, [I told her] ‘the fact that you're gonna be a UCLA jersey with me is insane.’ She honestly is one of my best friends.”
While the chapter of Grandview and the Betts sisters is closing, a new one is set to begin in Westwood. One that will be a new experience for both Lauren and Sienna. After years building themselves up, they now get the rare chance to pour that self confidence into each other and potentially make even more history in Pauley Pavilion and beyond.
“I think seeing how happy UCLA has made her, and how the coaches really care about her wellbeing makes me really excited to go there and join that and be a part of that,” Sienna concludes, “And I’m excited to grow as a person, like Lauren has.”
Nice hatchet job on Stanford. You failed to mention that Lauren was playing behind Cameron Brink and Kiki Iriafen. Lauren would have known that when she was coming in and she would have known what Tara's system was going to be. Lauren and her family should take some responsibility for the situation.