I almost didn’t come to UCLA.

You could probably count on one hand the number of students who attended an Ivy League university in the history of my high school. Prestigious universities were not a regular topic of conversation, and most people ended up going to college somewhere nearby, along the coast of Southern California.

So as a senior, I followed suit and toured the small list of private religious schools and Cal State schools that graduates of my high school typically attended. But no matter how hard I tried to envision myself at these schools, none of them felt right.

Given how obsessive I was over maintaining a perfect GPA in high school, community college was never on the table for me. So when my parents suggested I spend two more years at home, I was immediately against the idea.

That was not how I envisioned my college experience.

It hurt to watch my peers start their new lives in college, while I was stuck at home. But I held onto the belief that there had to be something bigger waiting for me.

Community college ended up being wonderful.

I rediscovered my love for soccer, made lifelong friendships and memories with my teammates and got to spend two more years living with my family.

Despite my ability to make the best out of a situation I never thought I would be in, I spent every night wondering if my hard work would ever pay off.

That moment finally came when an acceptance email from UCLA landed in my inbox in April 2023. It wasn’t until then that I started to realize community college was not a detour but actually a step toward a life I never could have imagined as a high schooler.

I always loved to write. As a little kid, I wrote, illustrated and constructed my own book about a girl who turned into a hot dog.

But there was never a space beyond the classroom for me to fully dive into my knack for writing. That is, until I saw that applications were open for the Daily Bruin.

Unlike the other club applications I was filling out during those first few weeks at UCLA, I genuinely enjoyed the Daily Bruin application process. Even though I had zero experience in journalism, responding to the prompts felt natural, almost easy.

I jumped right into the deep end of journalism as part of the gymnastics beat. Although I had only ever watched gymnastics a few times during the Olympics, I was tasked with writing breaking wraps about the meets and generating interview questions for a sport I knew nothing about.

The Daily Bruin challenged me like I had never been challenged before – and I loved it.

I will never forget my first experience as a student reporter. As I sat at the media table alongside gymnastics editor Ben Royer and fellow intern, soon-to-be gymnastics editor Aaron Doyle at Meet the Bruins in Pauley Pavilion in December 2023, I was captivated by the fast-paced environment and thrill of being so close to the action.

And that thrill has yet to fade.

As I reflect on these last two years with the Daily Bruin, I realize this newspaper was the “something bigger” that I had been waiting for in community college. Without it, my passion for elevating women’s presence in the sports industry and increasing coverage of women’s sports might have stayed buried.

I often think about what would have happened if I had not gone to community college, UCLA or joined the Daily Bruin.

I would have never gotten the chance to travel to Berkeley and Salt Lake City to cover the gymnastics team at back-to-back NCAA Regionals. I would have never been in the background of the televised March Madness selection show when UCLA earned its first No. 1 overall seed in program history. I would have never interviewed two-time Olympian Jordan Chiles or met National Softball Hall of Famer Lisa Fernandez.

I would have never applied for an internship at Dodgers Nation, where I got to cover the Los Angeles Dodgers on their 2024 World Series run – and where I’ll continue working after graduation. I would not be packing my bags to head to Oklahoma City for the Women’s College World Series – a tournament I have been watching on TV with my mom for years.

Like community college, journalism was never part of the plan, but now, I can’t imagine my life without it.

As my time at the Daily Bruin comes to an end and I prepare to tackle the unpredictabilities of post-grad life in New York City, I have learned not to fear the unknown because the best experiences in life are often the ones you do not anticipate.

Going to community college was hard and something I never expected. I spent two years waiting for it to finally be “my turn.”

But the Daily Bruin was absolutely worth the wait.

Garcia was Sports staff from 2024-2025 and a Sports contributor and reporter from 2023-2024.

The landscape of college athletics may never be the same.

U.S. Judge Claudia Wilken approved the final proposal for a near $2.8 billion antitrust settlement Friday, resolving the House vs. NCAA, Carter vs. NCAA and Hubbard vs. NCAA cases. The resolution involving these three cases became known as the House settlement.

The landmark settlement brings forth a new era of college athletics as schools can share up to $20.5 million of revenue with athletes throughout the next year — starting July 1 — and $2.8 billion in back payments will be granted to Division I athletes who competed between June 15, 2016, and Sept. 15, 2024.

The $20.5 million cap will increase by at least 4% each year during the 10-year agreement, and the $2.8 billion of back damages will be paid by the NCAA in $280 million installments over that span.

Mizzou athletic director Laird Veatch broke his silence on the groundbreaking decision in a statement released Sunday, claiming the decision marks the start of a “bold new chapter” for college sports.

“Our Mizzou Athletics staff has spent the past year preparing for this outcome, and while we recognize the operational shifts this requires, we are approaching the new era with a sense of purpose and optimism,” Veatch said in a letter obtained by the Missourian.

Veatch announced Nov. 1 that the department planned to fully embrace revenue sharing, reallocating expenses into high-impact items and exploring opportunities that have the ability to generate revenue.

The department also raised ticket prices for football and men’s basketball for the upcoming seasons, with the former seeing estimated admission fees and minimum donations to the athletic department up at least 50% for almost all available seats.

Veatch claimed Sunday that these adjustments have allowed Mizzou Athletics to remain devoted to revenue sharing, committing to the full $20.5 million pool that will be distributed to student-athletes throughout the 2025-26 season.

“This new model allows us to provide even greater opportunities for our student-athletes to benefit financially,” Veatch said. “By participating in revenue sharing at the highest level to maintain our competitive advantages, student-athletes around the country will know that Mizzou welcomes this evolution. Our commitment includes more than 60 new scholarships totaling approximately $3 million for next year.”

Also included in the settlement is that all third-party name, image and likeness deals from DI athletes of at least $600 must be reported and approved by the Deloitte clearinghouse through a platform called NIL Go, which launches Wednesday.

“We will be asking the Mizzou business community to embrace these opportunities and will provide more information in the near future,” Veatch said.

Veatch closed his letter by emphasizing the importance of the House settlement to the future of Mizzou Athletics and that the department remains focused on success.

Mizzou saw its football team finish the 2024 season with a 10-3 overall record and a 27-24 bowl win over Iowa on Dec. 30. The men’s basketball team bounced back from a campaign of winless conference play to finish 22-12 overall and 10-8 in the Southeastern Conference in the 2024-25 season, nabbing a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

The gymnastics squad earned its best finish in program history in the 2025 season, securing third place in the NCAA Gymnastics Championships, while the volleyball team earned its fifth Sweet 16 appearance in program history.

With the successes of these programs, there were also some that struggled to find their footing.

Baseball finished its 2025 season with 16-39 overall and 3-27 SEC record. The Tigers’ league record was the worst SEC record since the league moved to a 30-game slate in 1996.

The women’s basketball team ended its 2024-25 season with a 14-18 overall and 3-13 conference record, placing 13th in the SEC. The hiring of coach Kellie Harper on March 18 signaled a step toward a brighter future of the program.

Softball struggled to build momentum, finishing its 2025 campaign with a 25-31 overall and 8-16 league record after landing at No. 15 in the USASoftball Preseason Top 25.

Speaking about baseball during the department’s ‘Zou to You’ tour April 29 in St. Charles, Veatch explained that Mizzou Athletics had not invested what it needed to into the program.

With the House settlement bringing forth revenue sharing, Mizzou Athletics has the opportunity to invest some of the $20.5 million pool into these non-revenue sports. That reality may be unlikely, with some projections estimating that 75% of the funds will go toward football.

“Understand that our focus remains firmly on seizing this opportunity to advance Mizzou’s mission and compete for championships driven by our collective ‘Will to Win.'” Veatch said. “Everyone wants to win. But we must all have a true ‘will’ to win, where we are laser focused on winning championships, hanging banners and creating incredible lifelong memories.”

NEW YORK — Inside a Walmart store in New Jersey, a worker puts the finishing touches on a cake with an edible ink Sponge Bob on top. A colleague creates a buttercream rosette border for a different cake, while another co-worker frosts a tier of what will be a triple-deck dessert.

It’s graduation season, the busiest time of year for the 6,200 employees the nation’s largest retailer trained to hand-decorate cakes per customers’ orders. The cakes themselves come, pre-made, frozen and in a variety of shapes and sizes, from suppliers, not Walmart’s in-store bakeries.

But there’s no sugar-coating the importance the company places on its custom cake business. Its army of icing artisans are the highest paid hourly workers in a typical U.S. Walmart, excluding managers. Cake decorators earn an average of $19.25 per hour, compared with $18.25 for all non-managerial store workers, a company spokesperson said.

Melissa Fernandez, 36, started working in the electronics area and then the wireless services department of the Walmart in North Bergen, New Jersey, before she transferred to the deli area in search of better pay. But Fernandez had her eye on a cake decorating job and after spending two months getting trained by a store colleague, she picked up a piping bag full-time in 2021.

“I love baking at home. I love painting,” Fernandez said. “I love doing anything artistic, and I just always wanted to be a part of it.” After 11 years with Walmart, she said she now makes about $24.40 an hour.

Despite their elite status within Walmart, the retailer’s cake decorators have attracted detractors on social media.

The company promotes its personalized baked goods on TikTok, and the workers behind such creations do the same with their own profiles. As the content has grown in popularity, critics have accused Walmart decorators of stealing ideas and undercutting the work of professional cake artists with their low-priced products.

After TikTok videos praising Walmart’s $25 heart-shaped cakes with borders that resemble vintage lace cropped up before Valentine’s Day this year, a few bakers produced their own videos explaining why their cakes cost so much more and critiquing Walmart’s.

Debates ensued in the comments sections over whether Walmart represented evils of capitalism or served the needs of the masses.

A customized sheet cake that can be sliced to serve 96 people costs $59 at Walmart, about one-third to half the price that a nationwide sample of independent bakeries list online for similarly sized cakes. For $5.20 more, Walmart customers can add strawberry or “Bavarian creme” fillings, which like the bare cakes, are vendor-supplied.

The slice of the celebratory occasion cake market Walmart holds appears vast based on company-supplied figures. One out of four cakes sold in the U.S. comes from Walmart, and its employees will collectively decorate more than 1 million cakes during May and June, according to a company spokesperson.

The number of cakes decorated each day at the location where Fernandez works nearly doubles to 50-60 when school graduations come around, compared to 30-35 a day during the rest of the year, said Michael DeMarco, the manager of the store’s fresh food department. He credits the decorators’ talent and promotional efforts on TikTok.

“We’re getting a lot of repeat customers. We’re doing a lot more business because of just the viral sensations,” DeMarco said.

A TikTok video that showed Fernandez designing a $24 version of a customized bouquet cake — 12 cupcakes that are individually decorated and arranged to look like a bunch of flowers — received nearly a half-million views. The bouquet design was one of the North Bergen store’s most popular cakes last month, a company spokesperson said.

The dressy heart-shaped cakes, as well as cakes that resemble meals like sushi or a pile of spaghetti and meatballs, are popular too, she said. Fernandez also has created “burn away” cakes: an iced cake topped with an image printed on paper, which is set ablaze to reveal a different image underneath.

“TikTok helps me stay up to date,” she said. “A lot of trends that I see on there, within that week or within that month, customers will come asking about it. And we’re pretty up to date as well.”

Jazzing up a cake by hand requires skill, whether or not someone else did the baking, she said. Funneling buttercream frosting through a bag and various sized piping tips to yield the desired design without misplaced blobs is not the same as drawing or painting, Fernandez explained.

“There’s a lot of pressure points that you have to practice in order to get the borders correct and the right thickness or the right texture,” she said.

Tiffany Witzke, who has been a Walmart cake decorator since July 2016 and works at a store in Springfield, Missouri, has more than 912,000 followers on TikTok. The job attracts people who “can be extremely skilled and talented,” Witzke said, adding that customers want increasingly complicated designs.

“When I first started, it was basically just borders and writing,” she said. “Now, everybody wants more and more and more on their cake.”

Liz Berman, owner of The Sleepy Baker, in Natick, Massachusetts, said she’s not worried about losing customers to Walmart because of her attention to detail and the premium ingredients she uses.

She charges $205 and up for a half-sized sheet cake, the bouquets made up of two dozen miniature cupcakes cost $110. All the cakes are made from scratch, and Berman said she designs everything herself.

“It’s just a totally different business model,” she said. “Everything I do is custom.”

For Walmart, the cake decorating business delivers higher profit margins than some other areas, such as groceries and electronics, according to Marshal Cohen, chief retail advisor at market research firm Circana. But it’s also resonating with shoppers looking for affordable luxuries.

“We’ve gone into a period where the consumer is saying, ‘This is good enough,’” Cohen said.

Customers interviewed at the North Bergen store on a recent weekday seemed to be satisfied. George Arango, 34, picked up two customized cakes, one to celebrate a co-worker’s retirement and the other for a colleague getting another job. After researching prices on various store websites, he decided to give Walmart a try.

“The price is fantastic,” he said. “I’m walking out with two cakes for $40.”