You don’t must be sweating your March Insanity bracket (and even tuned right into a sport) to know the identify Caitlin Clark. After breaking an entire bunch of NCAA data over the previous couple years, the 22-year-old Iowa Hawkeyes guard is arguably probably the most talked about athlete for the time being—in faculty or professional sports activities—and she or he’s drawing long-deserved consideration to girls’s basketball whereas she’s at it.
Throughout her final dwelling sport on March 3, Clark casually turned NCAA’s all-time main scorer (out of males and girls). Tickets to the sold-out sport had been the costliest within the historical past of ladies’s basketball (each NCAA and WNBA)—not terribly shocking, contemplating different ones she’s performed in have drawn record-breaking TV views, too. The 15,000 followers who got here to observe Clark’s courtroom dominance IRL that day included basketball nice (and Clark’s childhood idol) Maya Moore, Jake from State Farm, and rapper Travis Scott.
And he or she’s solely wanting so as to add to all of the accolades as March Insanity continues: Clark’s proper in the course of her ultimate NCAA championship run, main her group to the Candy Sixteen for the third time (the group’s fourth since 2019). The highest-seeded Hawkeyes will face number-five seed Colorado Buffaloes on March 30 at 3:30 p.m. EST, vying for a spot within the Elite Eight the subsequent day. To brush up on all the things you might want to find out about basketball’s fastest-rising star earlier than then, listed below are just a few enjoyable details that will help 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. Verify, verify. (We’ll have to remain tuned on the “large mansion” and “three to 4 youngsters.”)
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 might 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 identical 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 “greatest supporters” and “greatest haters on the identical time,” telling ESPN with fun that they proceed to humble her. Specifically, she credit her older brother, whom she describes as all the time being “larger, stronger, quicker,” for pushing her athletically. “Every time I wished to play with him and his pals…I by no means gained something, and my mother all the time stated if you wish to play with them, you’ve bought to discover a approach to maintain your individual,” she advised ESPN.
4. She brings dwelling more money than some other girls’s faculty basketball participant.
In 2021, the NCAA enacted a rule permitting faculty gamers to earn money 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 faculty athlete influencers, and Clark is capitalizing on her second.
Because of 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, based on the verified NIL deal tracker run by On3. This sum makes Clark the highest-earning NCAA girls’s basketball participant ever and the fourth highest-earning faculty athlete (behind males’s basketball gamers Bronny James and Shedeur Sanders and ladies’s gymnastics star Livvy Dune).
5. A advertising and marketing main helps her benefit from it.
When she’s not working towards free throws or pumping iron, you may catch Clark drafting a killer retail technique. She’s an honors pupil majoring in advertising and marketing with a minor in communications research on the College of Iowa’s Tippie School of Enterprise. And her campaign-riddled Instagram grid is just proof that hitting these books is paying off.