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Betsy Stephenson, an associate athletic director at UCLA since 1996, will leave to become the ath

Not long after returning from a second interview for the athletic director position at Emory University, Betsy Stephenson headed to the UCLA women’s basketball banquet. The associate athletic director wouldn’t miss it for the world.

There, she received a note from guard Nikki Blue, which read: “Thank you for all you’ve done for us. Sometimes you just have to throw four down and go for yourself.”

The reference to Blue’s isolation play, in which she takes on an opponent off the dribble one-on-one, found an appropriate place in the context of Stephenson’s departure to the Division III university in Atlanta, Ga.

After seven years tending to the needs of athletes and coaches at UCLA, Stephenson, who will be assuming responsibilities as Emory’s athletic director on June 1, is finally making a move for herself.

The average student on UCLA’s campus probably doesn’t know who Betsy Stephenson is.

But athletes definitely know her. And she knows them. And not just their stats – she knows their hopes, their fears, their dreams.

So when Stephenson broke the news to the Bruin athletes on the Olympic sports teams she oversees, there were disappointed sighs.

But players like Blue understood.

“I wasn’t going to take just any job to be an athletic director,” Stephenson said. “It had to be the right job.”

For Stephenson, working with athletes means encouraging success: For her, it’s the feeling of accomplishment players attain when they work their hardest – a simple idea for someone who leads by example, as Stephenson does. She oversees the majority of Olympic sports at UCLA, including women’s softball, basketball and gymnastics. Under her watch, UCLA teams have won 15 national championships in the past seven years.

“I haven’t worked for an administrator who has known every player on every team by name,” UCLA women’s soccer coach Jill Ellis said. “Everything that goes on here matters to Betsy. She’s been a tremendous advocate for the student-athlete and a proponent for them at UCLA.”

Stephenson’s love for athletics began long before she claimed a third-floor office in the Morgan Center. After graduating from Kansas in 1983 – where she played volleyball – she worked in event management for the NCAA, and ultimately as the Director of Division I men’s basketball operations.

“When I worked at the NCAA, I was confused about why the people there wanted to hire people from college campuses,” she said. “Then, I got on a campus and realized how important it was to get that perspective.”

She was offered that opportunity to move onto a campus in 1992, when she returned to her alma mater in the same role she holds at UCLA today.

After meeting administrators and coaches from UCLA at the 1996 volleyball regionals, she was invited to make another move – to Westwood.

“If you look top-to-bottom, the programs that coaches and players are exposed to here was the main draw for me,” Stephenson said. “The substance behind the Olympic sports programs was what separated UCLA from others.”

Stephenson came to UCLA under difficult circumstances, as the athletic department was still mired in the mess of the 1995 softball season, when it was discovered that an athlete was playing under a soccer scholarship, a violation of NCAA rules.

The NCAA was processing the case, which ultimately cost UCLA the 1995 championship and the opportunity to compete in postseason play the following year.

“The penalty was a witch hunt, with what they did. They went after a sport that was in trouble to make an example out of UCLA,” she said.

Seven years removed from the scandal, Stephenson must pause to find the right words. The wounds might have scarred; they haven’t disappeared.

That experience fostered a fierce loyalty in Stephenson, which has never wavered.

“She will do anything for your program and for this school,” said women’s basketball coach Kathy Olivier.

Keeping her role at UCLA would have been easy, but the move to Emory was a decision Stephenson had to make for her career. Her name had come up in unofficial circles when the athletic director position was open at Kansas and at Hawaii in 2003. In addition, she was a finalist for UCLA’s athletic director position in 2002, which ultimately went to Dan Guerrero.

Some speculate she has not received more interest from Division I schools as a result of her lack of football management; she points to Guerrero’s appointment from UC Irvine, which does not have a football program.

But it’s the Olympic sports which have kept her here, not the big-name glamour of UCLA.

A memory that will never leave her was one of her first: the 1997 men’s soccer championship.

“It was the golden goal,” she said. “It took my breath away. I couldn’t believe it. We had our subs in and just kept waiting ... it just took my breath away.”

In the books, Stephenson is ending her time at UCLA the same way she started: holding a trophy with UCLA’s name engraved as the national gymnastics champions. This year, in Pauley Pavilion, Stephenson shed tears – surely of joy, but also of sadness. UCLA will always hold a special place in Stephenson’s heart; but for now, she’s taking one for herself.