The indicators have been all there, even from the start. The budding potential. The boldness. Whereas she’d but to actually grasp her craft, the imaginative and prescient had already been there. She was unafraid to try deep threes, lengthy earlier than the vary was actually there. She was inventive and wished to dish out dimes to her teammates, too. That is what stood out to Iowa affiliate head coach Jan Jensen when she first noticed Caitlin Clark play as a sixth grader, having simply joined the All-Iowa Assault AAU program in central Iowa that very same 12 months.
“It didn’t take however a second, possibly a minute,” Jensen advised the Related Press. “That little step-back sassy three, this little seventh-, eighth-grader. Yeah, she’s diff. You could possibly simply inform. They’re simple to determine however actually laborious to get. All people can see the true, true ones. The trick is to get them.”
Jensen performed a serious half over time in recruiting Clark, who was intrigued by Iowa’s enjoying type and what head coach Lisa Bluder had finished with this system and the purpose guard place, particularly. At Iowa, she might play freely. Quick. And, with senior Kathleen Doyle leaving for the WNBA Draft, she could be subsequent in line to not solely orchestrate the offense, however make an impression.
Years later, Jensen admitted that they talked to Clark about what she might do on the collegiate stage. How she might take them to the Remaining 4 and past. It matched completely with Clark’s personal imaginative and prescient for herself: “I’ve targets for a Remaining 4,” she advised Sports activities Illustrated again in 2020. “I’ve huge hopes and goals, which I believe any individual ought to in case you’re enjoying basketball with them. Who wouldn’t wish to win and be the very best?”
It’s one factor to dream; it’s one other to do it, after which much more. Might Clark, or anybody who knew her throughout these early days, have ever imagined that she’d change into the best faculty basketball participant Iowa has ever seen? Or, arguably, the best within the faculty sport in the present day, man or girl? What about the best way she’s transcended the game—not simply ladies’s basketball, however the sport fully. The NCAA all-time scoring file. The brand pictures. The Nike commercials. Promoting out arenas like a rock star, having rappers like Travis Scott and WNBA legends like Maya Moore pull as much as watch her play, the fixed crowds of individuals wanting her autograph after video games. What did Beyoncé say once more? You already know you’re that [girl] while you trigger all this dialog. What was it Drake mentioned, too? You already know it’s actual if you end up who you suppose you might be.
SLAM 249 that includes Caitlin Clark is out there now. Store.
Caitlin Clark is larger than basketball, greater than any field rating, viral clip or brand shot. She’s greater than the checklist of awards she’s gained to date throughout her four-year profession at Iowa, too. An distinctive individual, girl, human, on the forefront of a really particular second in historical past we’re all dwelling in proper now. A basketball Renaissance, a brand new period for girls’s basketball. She’s not simply doing it alone—there are such a lot of stars who’re altering the school basketball panorama proper now, and Clark has a complete squad dominating alongside her, too.
To totally respect what’s occurring in ladies’s hoops proper now, we first should acknowledge the previous and the numerous, many ladies who helped paved the best way earlier than them: the legends who held the information Clark has now damaged—no, not simply Pistol Pete, however Lynette Woodard and Kelsey Plum. Then there’s this system Lisa Bluder has constructed at Iowa over the previous 20 years, earlier than Clark even arrived. And what about all of the Iowan ladies who competed in 6-on-6 basketball, together with Jensen and her grandmother, lengthy earlier than ladies have been even allowed to play fives.
And to even fathom what that younger lady, now a lady, from West Des Moines has finished, you must return. Right here is the place our story actually begins…
***
For those who’re new to ladies’s hoops, this historical past lesson is for you. Whereas basketball was technically invented by a person everyone knows of in Springfield, MA, simply down I-91 N, it was a lady by the title of Senda Berenson Abbott who first launched the sport to ladies at Smith School in 1892. This was 80 years earlier than Title IX was handed, however girlie was on to one thing. Ditching Dr. James Naismith’s peach baskets for wastebaskets, the Smithies dropped buckets (actually) in a model of the sport that divided the court docket into three sections. Whereas ideologies about ladies—their delicacy, bodily exercise impacting their skill to breed—positively existed again then (to maintain it actual, even Berenson as soon as mentioned that “want to win…will make our ladies do sadly unwomanly issues”), that was actually the catalyst.
The sport solely grew from there, from the east to the west, finally reaching rural Iowa within the 1900s. There, ladies have been already used to engaged on farms alongside their brothers and fathers, bailing hay and sweating, so the concept of them enjoying basketball wasn’t too scandalous. Rural excessive colleges have been actually the primary within the nation to permit women to play 6-on-6, a model of the sport that break up the court docket in half, concerned three forwards and three guards and had guidelines like gamers solely being allowed to dribble twice.
It’s no coincidence that one of the crucial electrical ladies’s faculty basketball gamers of in the present day was born within the Hawkeye State. The throughlines in Clark’s story actually begin right here.
By 1920, the primary state match was held in her hometown of Des Moines at Drake College. The next 12 months, Audubon beat Ottumwa within the championship because of an 18-point efficiency by the MVP, Dorcas Anderson, who simply so occurs to be the grandmother of Clark’s affiliate head coach, Jan Jensen.
Greater than half a century later, Jensen, too, would star on that exact same court docket her grandmother did. By 1990, Jensen was averaging 29.6 ppgs as a senior at Drake, the place she was coached by none apart from newly-hired Bluder, who additionally performed 6-on-6 basketball in highschool at Linn-Mar in Marion, IA. After 10 seasons at Drake, Bluder took over at Iowa and finally employed Jensen, first as an assistant.
“She was simply great. She was actually only a participant’s coach and intense however knew tips on how to make it enjoyable. Clearly, it benefited me,” Jensen advised The Athletic.
Bluder’s teaching résumé at Iowa speaks for itself: with an 850-391 general file, she’s this system’s all-time winningest coach and at the moment ranks 14th in NCAA DI ladies’s basketball historical past. She’s led the Hawkeyes to 21 postseason appearances, together with their first-ever nationwide championship look simply final season. Through the years, she’s coached three Large Ten Participant of the Yr standouts, together with Clark, who’s gained it in back-to-back years, in addition to Megan Gustafson and Kathleen Doyle. Her success is as a lot a testomony to her good basketball thoughts as it’s her skill to attach together with her gamers; as Clark advised The Athletic, Bluder can strike a steadiness between “critical” and “fiery,” but additionally “enjoyable” and “goofy.”
This system Bluder has constructed is now a powerhouse. This 12 months’s squad can run opponents into the bottom, shoot the ball in your face, after which stuff you on the defensive finish. Not solely is the workforce geared up with Clark however an entire roster of licensed bucket getters. Look no additional than Kate Martin, a 6-0 graduate pupil and guard who joined this system forward of the 2019-20 season, is at the moment averaging double digits, together with a career-high 12.9 factors in addition to 6.5 boards. Having grown up in a household of Hawkeye followers—Jensen is her aunt—Martin has recognized that she wished to go well with up within the black and gold since she was 5. Flash ahead to in the present day, and he or she’s emerged as a flexible standout who can do all of it: block pictures, end on the rim and knock down threes from past the arc. However her impression on this system, and this Hawkeyes workforce, can’t be measured in simply particular person stats or accolades. Sometimes called “The Glue,” within the media, she is undoubtedly Iowa’s heartbeat and their tenacious chief.
Then there’s Gabbie Marshall, one other sharpshooter with a loopy step-back sport who can also be Iowa’s defensive ace. Marshall is the primary Iowa ladies’s basketball participant to file 200 threes and 200 steals in a profession and has been key in matchups towards groups like Nebraska this season. Who might neglect these ultimate 31 seconds of the Large Ten Championship thriller when she displayed pure grit and blocked an tried three by Nebraska’s Logan Nissley in additional time. “[Marshall is] among the finest shooters, however I don’t suppose she will get sufficient credit score for her protection,” Clark mentioned of Marshall, in The Day by day Iowan. “She takes the problem of guarding the very best participant each single sport.”
Sophomore Hannah Stuelke was additionally key in Iowa’s Large 10 championship win, combining with Clark for 59 factors to assist convey the Hawkeyes their sixth convention title. The matchup, which averaged over 3 million viewers on CBS, is now the most-watched ladies’s basketball sport on the community since UConn-Tennessee in ’99. Stuelke’s been placing up huge numbers all season lengthy, together with 47 factors towards Penn State in February, which is the second-most factors ever scored in Carver-Hawkeye Area. And what’s even more durable is that she did it with out making an attempt a single three. Scary.
All the hype and media consideration we’re seeing across the program now could be simply a part of the cultural material of Iowa’s famend hoops historical past. Not simply this system, however your entire state, which has been supporting ladies’s basketball since earlier than anybody on Bluder’s present roster was even born. Women’ basketball drew sold-out crowds of 15,000 folks. Folks purchased their tickets method prematurely. Sound acquainted? We’re not speaking about simply in the present day, however again within the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. When the Hawkeyes defeated South Carolina within the Remaining 4 final 12 months, Bluder was simply as shocked to listen to that Iowa legend Molly Bolin, who additionally performed 6-on-6 and dropped 83 factors as a senior at Moravia Excessive Faculty within the ’70s, was in attendance.
Now, think about if Clark, or Martin, or Marshall or any star faculty basketball participant in the present day was enjoying again then. The final 12 months 6-on-6 basketball was performed was ’93, however tales about that point have been handed down by means of generations. Even Clark is aware of what sort of time these ladies have been on. “I used to joke together with her and be like, Man, Caitlin, you’ll have been so good at 6-on-6, or, you would have simply performed offense,” her highschool coach Kristin Meyer tells us. “[She] would have averaged over 100 factors a sport, however she would have hated it as a result of she would have needed to wait on her half and she will be able to’t go get the ball.”
Now image this: what if these exact same Iowan legends—like Denise Lengthy (the primary girl drafted by an NBA workforce, the San Francisco Warriors) and Deb Coates, to call a number of—had what Caitlin now advantages from: social media, NIL offers, {a magazine} cowl like this one. Clark isn’t simply rewriting ladies’s basketball historical past; she’s authoring the following chapter. And she or he is aware of her historical past, too. “Once I hear from lots of people that performed basketball, whether or not it was 6-on-6 nevertheless a few years in the past, I believe they’re blown away at the place ladies’s basketball is now and the platform we get to play on,” Clark mentioned in USA Right this moment. “That doesn’t come if it’s not for the individuals who got here earlier than us.”
For many who examine and train ladies’s sports activities historical past, together with Jennifer Sterling, a lecturer within the American Research division on the College of Iowa, Clark’s place in historical past is monumental. “It’s necessary historical past going down proper now,” Sterling says. “What she’s finished on the court docket and off the court docket, what the workforce has finished, and the teaching and the way athletics has supported this second, I believe is all actually distinctive.”
And so, our story continues…
***
The “Caitlin Clark Impact” didn’t simply occur when she arrived at Iowa. It’s all the time been one thing innately inside her. Earlier than she’d ever even picked up a basketball, Clark’s dad and mom would hear from her daycare that their 2-year-old had “distinctive motor expertise and coordination,” as they advised HawkCentral. She was all the time aggressive by nature, too, whether or not she was enjoying Candyland on their front room ground or hooping towards her brothers. On the age of 5, her grandfather, Bob Nizzi, recalled in HawkFanatic a time when she stood as much as a bullyish boy on the court docket and “placed on the very best downfield block that I’ve ever seen and rolled this child out of bounds and stood over him.”
All the time a gifted athlete, her father, Brent, quickly seen Clark might hit pictures from 15 toes on a six-foot hoop, and when he was unable to discover a women youth basketball program for her, he put her in a boys league in second grade. They ended up successful the match, and because the story goes, somebody’s mother was so pressed that Brent remembers them saying that “a lady shouldn’t be allowed to play in a boys match.”
However Clark’s all the time been unafraid and unapologetically herself. She’s all the time pushed boundaries, too. Right this moment, we’ve seen her hit the MJ shoulder shrug after a deep three and wave off opponents like a G, issues she’s been each celebrated and criticized for. “All people desires to critique her, all people desires her to be nicer. They need her to be extra ladylike. They need her to be much less smug. They need her to go. That child loves it. She’s an entertainer. She is passionate,” Jensen advised the Hawk Central in 2023.
She remembers Clark like that in highschool, too. Energetic, even within the classroom. A lot in order that, as a junior, Meyer remembers considered one of Clark’s historical past academics telling her that on examination days, Clark would end her checks so shortly that they began having to ship her to Meyer’s workplace, simply to maintain her preoccupied. “She all the time took college very severely, however she must be entertained,” Meyer says.
The identical goes for on the court docket. Once they’d have conversations about her shot choice, there could be instances when Meyer would say to her, Caitlin, we’re not going to try this. However did she hear? “I by no means actually gave her the inexperienced mild,” Meyer says. “She simply all the time took it to be trustworthy.” As a junior at Dowling, Clark averaged 32.6 ppg and dropped 60 factors towards Mason Metropolis HS, one off the state file. Now she’s doing the identical on the collegiate stage; as we head to press—and he or she heads to the NCAA Event, Caitlin’s at the moment averaging a career-high 31.9 ppg, has had a number of 40-plus level performances and is nonetheless setting information.
“Her sport 1721581518 is similar to what it was when she was a freshman in highschool,” Meyer says. “Her attacking the basket, her court docket imaginative and prescient and her skill [to make] simply extremely tough passes look simple. Her vary—she didn’t shoot from half court docket or from the brand essentially in highschool—however she was testing the boundaries a bit bit so far as positively capturing behind the highschool three-point line.”
And that’s precisely what makes her distinctive: pure expertise and work ethic apart, Clark has all the time been simply wired completely different. “Caitlin, she’s simply fearless and he or she is assured and he or she is daring and he or she is courageous and brave,” Meyer says. “It took these pure expertise, with the work ethic [she’s built], and to have the braveness to only play huge.”
***
As for the remainder of Caitlin Clark’s story, that’s nonetheless being written. By the point you’re studying this, Iowa is a No. 1 seed going into the NCAA Event. We don’t know but how this school chapter will finish and if she’ll find yourself successful her first, and this system’s first, NCAA title. Or, how the following one, her arrival to the WNBA, will start. Will she have the ability maintain her personal within the WNBA because the Indiana Fever’s projected No. 1 choose? No matter what occurs, her impression gained’t be tainted within the slightest. Longtime faculty basketball followers, new followers, younger followers, are all enamored by her. At Dowling, Meyer’s present gamers hear tales about her 60-point sport, her competitiveness and her strategy to follow and dedication to creating her teammates higher.
“At any time when she’s stopped by [the school], the ladies are simply nervous round her. They nearly really feel like she’s well-known, which to me is so bizarre as a result of she’s simply Caitlin,” Meyer says.
Some name Clark the “feminine Stephen Curry,” whereas others haven’t stopped evaluating her to Pete Maravich since she broke his all-time NCAA scoring file this 12 months. However Clark made it clear to the media after she broke the file that she doesn’t wish to be remembered for simply her accolades, however slightly, “for the best way I performed with a smile on my face, my aggressive hearth.”
And that’s her legacy. That’s what we’ll be speaking about within the years to come back—Caitlin’s ardour, her expertise, what she’s finished for girls’s basketball. After we requested Sterling about Clark’s impression—and whether or not we will count on a chapter about her in seminar syllabuses sooner or later (the reply is sure)—our concept was confirmed right: the legend of Caitlin Clark is simply starting. It’s all half of a bigger historical past.
“Hopefully that is the start of extra superb issues to come back,” Sterling says. “And the end result of the numerous adjustments in ladies’s sport which have occurred alongside the best way.”
Portraits by Atiba Jefferson.
