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Basketball star Caitlin Clark has had an amazing year. Just 10 months ago, Clark was playing guard for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Clark led her team to a national championship game for the second year in a row, where they unfortunately lost to the first seed, South Carolina. Clark was later named Women’s College Basketball’s Player of the Year and received numerous other honors. Then, in April, she became the first pick in the Women’s National Basketball Association draft.
Now Caitlin Clark is a WNBA star, playing for the Indiana Fever. She and fellow rookie Angel Reese made an immediate impact on the sport and were both named to the All-Star team, a rare honor for rookies. In October, Clark was named the league’s Rookie of the Year.
A fearless competitor
Topping off her amazing 2024, this week Caitlin Clark was named Time Magazine’s Athlete of the Year. She is the first WNBA player to be recognized, and just the second individual female athlete to be Athlete of the Year, after Simone Biles in 2021.
The popularity of women’s basketball has grown exponentially in recent years and many of those new fans have come to the sport thanks to Clark. WNBA attendance has been at an all-time high since she joined the league, and it’s no wonder. Clark’s fearless play on the court is simply fun to watch. As Time describes it in the article announcing her “Athlete of the Year” honor:
Clark, 22, takes shots with a degree of difficulty never before witnessed in the women’s game; her signature 30-ft. launches, from near half-court on team logos across America, are akin to home-run balls, hanging high in the air. Can she actually make that flabbergasting attempt? Yes! it turns out. Over and over again.
Bringing faith to the basketball court
Clark excelled in multiple sports as a child, but by the time she was 13, it was clear that she was a special talent on the basketball court. As a teenager, she attended Dowling Catholic High School in West Des Moines, Iowa, where she was, of course, the best player on the team.
According to Crux, faith has played an important part in her life:
“We get to live our faith every day. Dowling starts every day with prayer and ends every day with prayer,” Clark told a reporter with the Des Moines Register in 2018. “This is a big reason why Dowling has such a special culture and is such a special place to go to school.”
Her high school coach, Kristin Meyer, told Crux that Clark’s faith was a key part of her success on the court and with fans:
"For two hours she lets them have this great experience and she takes that pretty seriously, and knows that those gifts from God are an opportunity to bring joy to other people.”
That experience of joy has now spread to sports arenas around the country, leading to Caitlin Clark's recognition by Time, and pointing to even more amazing achievements ahead.
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