You don’t must be sweating your March Insanity bracket (and even tuned right into a recreation) to know the identify Caitlin Clark. After breaking a complete bunch of NCAA information over the previous couple years, the 22-year-old Iowa Hawkeyes guard is arguably probably the most talked about athlete in the intervening time—in school or professional sports activities—and he or she’s drawing long-deserved consideration to ladies’s basketball whereas she’s at it.
Throughout her final house recreation on March 3, Clark casually grew to become NCAA’s all-time main scorer (out of males and ladies). Tickets to the sold-out recreation had been the costliest within the historical past of ladies’s basketball (each NCAA and WNBA)—not terribly stunning, contemplating different ones she’s performed in have drawn record-breaking TV views, too. The 15,000 followers who got here to look at Clark’s court docket dominance IRL that day included basketball nice (and Clark’s childhood idol) Maya Moore, Jake from State Farm, and rapper Travis Scott.
And she or he’s solely trying so as to add to all of the accolades as March Insanity continues: Clark’s proper in the midst of her closing NCAA championship run, main her workforce to the Candy Sixteen for the third time (the workforce’s fourth since 2019). The highest-seeded Hawkeyes will face number-five seed Colorado Buffaloes on Sunday, March 30 at 3:30 p.m. EST, vying for a spot within the Elite Eight the following day. To brush up on all the pieces you must find out about basketball’s fastest-rising star earlier than then, listed below are a number of enjoyable details that can assist you get began.
1. She’s been manifesting a basketball profession since third grade.
Clark grew up enjoying aggressive sports activities, together with soccer and softball, however she’s had basketball particularly on her thoughts since on the age of 9. In an ESPN Inside Look interview, Clark shared a dream board she made in elementary faculty of her life objectives, which included incomes a basketball scholarship and enjoying within the WNBA. Test, test. (We’ll have to remain tuned on the “big mansion” and “three to 4 children.”)
2. Clark performed on boys’ groups as a child.
As the center little one, Clark grew up in a self-described “sports activities household,” and her dad was her first basketball coach. He acknowledged her superior abilities early on, and signed her up for boys’ groups so she may proceed to be challenged. She performed on the boys’ soccer and basketball groups longer than most groups stay co-ed—up till about sixth grade—and even gained MVP one 12 months. “I feel it was tremendous particular in my improvement, and it was one thing that by no means fazed me,” she advised ESPN. “It was similar to, I’m a woman, I can maintain my very own, this isn’t something I have been afraid of.”
3. Her brothers helped her attain her athletic potential.
Clark calls her brothers each her “largest supporters” and “largest haters on the identical time,” telling ESPN with amusing that they proceed to humble her. Specifically, she credit her older brother, whom she describes as at all times being “greater, stronger, quicker,” for pushing her athletically. “At any time when I wished to play with him and his buddies…I by no means gained something, and my mother at all times stated if you wish to play with them, you’ve received to discover a option to maintain your individual,” she advised ESPN.
4. She brings house more money than some other ladies’s school basketball participant.
In 2021, the NCAA enacted a rule permitting school gamers to generate profits from their identify, picture, and likeness (NIL). In different phrases, student-athletes can now receives a commission for social media model offers, commercials, and different partnerships. The rule successfully launched the primary school athlete influencers, and Clark is capitalizing on her second.
Due to her 1.1 million Instagram followers and all that nationwide consideration, Clark has been a pure companion for main manufacturers, together with State Farm, Gatorade, and Nike. Her offers complete $3.1 million since January 2022, in response to the verified NIL deal tracker run by On3. This sum makes Clark the highest-earning NCAA ladies’s basketball participant ever and the fourth highest-earning school athlete (behind males’s basketball gamers Bronny James and Shedeur Sanders and girls’s gymnastics star Livvy Dune).
5. A advertising and marketing main helps her profit from it.
When she’s not working towards free throws or pumping iron, you’ll be able to catch Clark drafting a killer retail technique. She’s an honors scholar majoring in advertising and marketing with a minor in communications research on the College of Iowa’s Tippie Faculty of Enterprise. And her campaign-riddled Instagram grid is just proof that hitting these books is paying off.