More than a decade later, the 2000 ITA West Region and 2008 PAC-10 Coach of the Year has amassed 14 seasons with 12 top-ten finishes and seven in the top-five, with a NCAA championship in 2008 and the team’s first national championship since 1981, and the most wins that season since 1982. She’s also coached 16 All-Americans and guided her team to a winning season again this year (21-4) with a record-setting sweep of every event at the Pac-10 Championship in Ojai.

“What motivates me is getting each team to be the best team it can be and each player to be the best that they can be,” says the 39-year-old Sampras Webster in her low-key style as she drives home from work one day. (“Once I’m done with work, I pretty much go straight home to be with my family,” she says of her three-year old twins Sophia and Savannah and husband Steve.) “I like the everyday of getting players to improve and become better players and better people more than winning a national championship. I get most rewarded when I get a thank you from the players telling me how much of an impact I made in their lives—that means a lot to me.”

That was demonstrated in 2000 when one of her top players, Sara Walker, lost her mother in an automobile accident during a tournament and Sampras Webster flew to El Paso to comfort Sara and her family and stayed with them for three days.

“I thought she would be here a day and then ask Sara if she was coming back to play,” Sara’s father told Sports Illustrated. “When I asked Stella if she had found out what Sara was going to do, she told me, 'I'm not here to find out what her plans are. I'm here only to be here if she needs me.' I thought that was remarkable. It spoke volumes about the kind of person she is."

Sampras Webster admits UCLA has a winning tradition and high-powered expectations for all its teams, but while she recruits players who she thinks can handle the competition and then expects them to perform under pressure, she rarely exerts that pressure herself.

“I’m not a screamer,” she says with her usual equanimity. “I build relationships. I think the main thing as a coach is that you’ve got to be able to reach and motivate your players. You’ve got different personalities and different backgrounds and you’ve got to be able to reach each player. A great coach, regardless of the sport, has to be able to communicate and motivate the team.”
Apparently that quality was spotted by her former Bruins coach (Bill Zaima) who hired her as his assistant and groomed her to take over after he stepped down. She was already more than familiar with the program: a four-time All-American as a Bruin (among a handful in the school’s history), she had been a doubles champ and rated No. 3 nationally in doubles and No. 42 in singles.

And she was glad to be “home” again at UCLA after a year on the pro circuit (where she competed in doubles in both the U.S. Open and Wimbledon and won three satellite tournament titles).

“It was good, I was doing pretty well,” she says. “But I knew I was never going to be in the top ten in the world and I wasn’t crazy about all the traveling. I definitely wouldn’t have had this job if I hadn’t quit, so I’m very happy where I am right now and I think it was the right decision.”

It also keeps her close to family, where she’s always liked to be (an admitted homebody, her brothers kidded her for years about still living at home) and her family close to her, where they’ve always been. Even during his tour days, when her brother Pete the Wimbledon champ was in town he would sometimes deliver lunch to her office before going for a workout or stop by to talk to her players.

“She’s always looking out for me and protecting me,” he says of his older sister (by a year). “Her opinion is so important to me that if she doesn’t like somebody, that definitely unsettles me.”

The family got into the sport that became their hallmark when their father Sam (an aerospace engineer) and his wife Georgia packed the family Pinto (and parrot Jose) and moved the whole clan from Potomac, Maryland to Rancho Palos Verdes, California when Stella was eight.

“My dad fell in love with California and the weather and said it reminded him a lot of Greece,” she says. “I knew that I had a ton of family back in DC and Maryland and we left all my cousins and my aunts and uncles from my mom’s side. Coming here we didn’t really know anyone and that was a big adjustment.”

The kids started playing tennis at the nearby Jack Kramer Club (“My dad thought it was a nice sport for the family”), where Stella and Pete took to the sport most. “Pete and I were pretty disciplined with it,” she says. “We played every day, and took lessons, and it really became a part of our life, our everyday life.”

Brother and sister also became fierce competitors, with each other, and the debate still rages today over when Stella finally stopped beating her brother. “My brother thinks I stopped beating him when he was 11, but he was definitely 13,” she insists. “I beat him all the time.”

And they stayed close even after Pete went on tour and Stella stopped playing and started coaching. “We were very close, we had spent a lot of time together growing up, and once he was on the tour we definitely kept in touch,” she says. As a coach and older sister did she ever critique him? “Oh, no,” she laughs, “I wouldn’t touch that. How could you tell the number one player in the world what he’s doing wrong?--Would you hold on one second?” she asks suddenly. “My husband keeps calling me and I just want to see what he wants.”

In fact, she met her husband through Pete, and while she herself doesn’t play tennis much anymore, except with her players, she says her husband has gotten into the game and “plays for fun.”

Which might be hard to do in the uber-tennis Sampras clan, except all the siblings now have children and have apparently mellowed (Marion, a teacher in LA, has three boys and a girl, Gus, an account executive who runs his brother’s business affairs, has two girls, Pete has two boys, and Stella has her twins).

“Now we mostly play with our kids,” says Sampras Webster. “And my parents never really played. They’re just excited now to be playing with their grandkids. It’s a lot of fun.”