The indicators had 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 aim deep threes, lengthy earlier than the vary was actually there. She was inventive and needed 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 would simply inform. They’re simple to establish however actually arduous to get. Everyone can see the true, true ones. The trick is to get them.”
Jensen performed a significant half over time in recruiting Clark, who was intrigued by Iowa’s enjoying fashion and what head coach Lisa Bluder had executed with this system and the purpose guard place, particularly. At Iowa, she may play freely. Quick. And, with senior Kathleen Doyle leaving for the WNBA Draft, she can be subsequent in line to not solely orchestrate the offense, however make an affect.
Years later, Jensen admitted that they talked to Clark about what she may do on the collegiate degree. How she may take them to the Closing 4 and past. It matched completely with Clark’s personal imaginative and prescient for herself: “I’ve targets for a Closing 4,” she advised Sports activities Illustrated again in 2020. “I’ve large hopes and goals, which I believe any individual ought to should you’re enjoying basketball with them. Who wouldn’t need to win and be the perfect?”
It’s one factor to dream; it’s one other to do it, after which much more. May Clark, or anybody who knew her throughout these early days, have ever imagined that she’d turn out to be the best school basketball participant Iowa has ever seen? Or, arguably, the best within the school recreation at this time, man or lady? What about the best way she’s transcended the game—not simply ladies’s basketball, however the recreation solely. The NCAA all-time scoring report. The brand photographs. 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 understand you’re that [girl] while you trigger all this dialog. What was it Drake stated, too? You understand it’s actual when you find yourself who you assume you might be.
SLAM 249 that includes Caitlin Clark is offered now. Store.
Caitlin Clark is larger than basketball, greater than any field rating, viral clip or brand shot. She’s greater than the record of awards she’s gained to date throughout her four-year profession at Iowa, too. An distinctive individual, lady, 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 faculty basketball panorama proper now, and Clark has a complete squad dominating alongside her, too.
To completely recognize what’s taking place in ladies’s hoops proper now, we first must acknowledge the previous and the various, 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 twenty 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 had been even allowed to play fives.
And to even fathom what that younger lady, now a lady, from West Des Moines has executed, you need to return. Right here is the place our story actually begins…
***
If you happen to’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 identify 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 means to breed—undoubtedly existed again then (to maintain it actual, even Berenson as soon as stated that “need 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 had 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 had been actually the primary within the nation to permit ladies to play 6-on-6, a model of the sport that cut 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 school basketball gamers of at this time was born within the Hawkeye State. The throughlines in Clark’s story actually begin right here.
By 1920, the primary state event was held in her hometown of Des Moines at Drake College. The next 12 months, Audubon beat Ottumwa within the championship due to 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 aside 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 large. She was actually only a participant’s coach and intense however knew how one can make it enjoyable. Clearly, it benefited me,” Jensen advised The Athletic.
Bluder’s teaching résumé at Iowa speaks for itself: with an 850-391 total report, she’s this system’s all-time winningest coach and presently 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. Over time, she’s coached three Large Ten Participant of the 12 months 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 sensible basketball thoughts as it’s her means to attach along with her gamers; as Clark advised The Athletic, Bluder can strike a steadiness between “severe” 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 crew geared up with Clark however an entire roster of licensed bucket getters. Look no additional than Kate Martin, a 6-0 graduate scholar and guard who joined this system forward of the 2019-20 season, is presently 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 needed to swimsuit up within the black and gold since she was 5. Flash ahead to at this time, and she or he’s emerged as a flexible standout who can do all of it: block photographs, end on the rim and knock down threes from past the arc. However her affect on this system, and this Hawkeyes crew, 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 recreation who can be Iowa’s defensive ace. Marshall is the primary Iowa ladies’s basketball participant to report 200 threes and 200 steals in a profession and has been key in matchups in opposition to groups like Nebraska this season. Who may overlook these last 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] probably the greatest shooters, however I don’t assume she will get sufficient credit score for her protection,” Clark stated of Marshall, in The Each day Iowan. “She takes the problem of guarding the perfect participant each single recreation.”
Sophomore Hannah Stuelke was additionally key in Iowa’s Large 10 championship win, combining with Clark for 59 factors to assist deliver the Hawkeyes their sixth convention title. The matchup, which averaged over 3 million viewers on CBS, is now the most-watched ladies’s basketball recreation on the community since UConn-Tennessee in ’99. Stuelke’s been placing up large numbers all season lengthy, together with 47 factors in opposition to 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. Ladies’ basketball drew sold-out crowds of 15,000 individuals. Individuals purchased their tickets method prematurely. Sound acquainted? We’re not speaking about simply at this time, however again within the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. When the Hawkeyes defeated South Carolina within the Closing 4 final 12 months, Bluder was simply as stunned to listen to that Iowa legend Molly Bolin, who additionally performed 6-on-6 and dropped 83 factors as a senior at Moravia Excessive College within the ’70s, was in attendance.
Now, think about if Clark, or Martin, or Marshall or any star school basketball participant at this time 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 via generations. Even Clark is aware of what sort of time these ladies had been on. “I used to joke along 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 recreation, 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 lady drafted by an NBA crew, the San Francisco Warriors) and Deb Coates, to call just a few—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 subsequent chapter. And he or she is aware of her historical past, too. “After I hear from lots of people that performed basketball, whether or not it was 6-on-6 nonetheless 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 stated in USA Immediately. “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 vital historical past happening proper now,” Sterling says. “What she’s executed on the court docket and off the court docket, what the crew has executed, 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 at all times 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 at all times aggressive by nature, too, whether or not she was enjoying Candyland on their lounge ground or hooping in opposition to 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 perfect downfield block that I’ve ever seen and rolled this child out of bounds and stood over him.”
At all times a gifted athlete, her father, Brent, quickly observed Clark may hit photographs from 15 toes on a six-foot hoop, and when he was unable to discover a ladies youth basketball program for her, he put her in a boys league in second grade. They ended up successful the event, and because the story goes, somebody’s mother was so pressed that Brent remembers them saying that “a woman shouldn’t be allowed to play in a boys event.”
However Clark’s at all times been unafraid and unapologetically herself. She’s at all times pushed boundaries, too. Immediately, 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. “Everyone needs to critique her, all people needs her to be nicer. They need her to be extra ladylike. They need her to be much less conceited. They need her to cross. 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 one among Clark’s historical past lecturers telling her that on examination days, Clark would end her assessments so shortly that they began having to ship her to Meyer’s workplace, simply to maintain her preoccupied. “She at all times took faculty 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 can be occasions when Meyer would say to her, Caitlin, we’re not going to try this. However did she pay attention? “I by no means actually gave her the inexperienced mild,” Meyer says. “She simply at all times took it to be trustworthy.” As a junior at Dowling, Clark averaged 32.6 ppg and dropped 60 factors in opposition to Mason Metropolis HS, one off the state report. Now she’s doing the identical on the collegiate degree; as we head to press—and she or he heads to the NCAA Match, Caitlin’s presently averaging a career-high 31.9 ppg, has had a number of 40-plus level performances and is nonetheless setting information.
“Her recreation 1715008733 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 means [to make] simply extremely troublesome passes look simple. Her vary—she didn’t shoot from half court docket or from the emblem essentially in highschool—however she was testing the boundaries slightly bit so far as undoubtedly taking pictures behind the highschool three-point line.”
And that’s precisely what makes her distinctive: pure expertise and work ethic apart, Clark has at all times been simply wired completely different. “Caitlin, she’s simply fearless and she or he is assured and she or he is daring and she or he is courageous and brave,” Meyer says. “It took these pure expertise, with the work ethic [she’s built], and to have the braveness to simply play large.”
***
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 Match. We don’t know but how this faculty chapter will finish and if she’ll find yourself successful her first, and this system’s first, NCAA title. Or, how the subsequent one, her arrival to the WNBA, will start. Will she have the opportunity maintain her personal within the WNBA because the Indiana Fever’s projected No. 1 decide? No matter what occurs, her affect gained’t be tainted within the slightest. Longtime school basketball followers, new followers, younger followers, are all enamored by her. At Dowling, Meyer’s present gamers hear tales about her 60-point recreation, 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 report this 12 months. However Clark made it clear to the media after she broke the report that she doesn’t need 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 return—Caitlin’s ardour, her expertise, what she’s executed for girls’s basketball. After we requested Sterling about Clark’s affect—and whether or not we will count on a chapter about her in seminar syllabuses in the future (the reply is sure)—our concept was confirmed appropriate: the legend of Caitlin Clark is simply starting. It’s all half of a bigger historical past.
“Hopefully that is the start of extra wonderful issues to return,” Sterling says. “And the end result of the various adjustments in ladies’s sport which have occurred alongside the best way.”
Portraits by Atiba Jefferson.
