Caitlin Clark raised the profile of ladies’s basketball to unprecedented ranges in each the school ranks and the WNBA, and Tuesday she was named the AP Female Athlete of the Year for her impression on and off the courtroom.
After main Iowa to the nationwide championship sport, Clark was the highest decide within the WNBA draft as anticipated and went on to win Rookie of the Year honors within the league. Followers packed sold-out arenas, and hundreds of thousands of tv viewers tuned in to observe her journey. Clark’s exploits had been far reaching, casting a lightweight on different girls’s sports activities leagues alongside the best way.
A bunch of 74 sports activities journalists from The Related Press and its members voted on the award. Clark obtained 35 votes, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles was second with 25 and boxer Imane Khelif was third, getting 4 votes.
Clark is simply the fourth girls’s basketball participant to be honored as the feminine athlete of the yr because it was first offered in 1931, becoming a member of Sheryl Swoopes (1993), Rebecca Lobo (1995) and Candace Parker (2008, 2021).
Caitlin Clark is the fourth girls’s basketball participant to be honored as the feminine athlete of the yr because it was first offered in 1931. AP Photograph/Michael Conroy
“I grew up a fan of Candace Parker and the individuals who got here earlier than me and to be honored on this method, is tremendous particular and I am grateful,” Clark mentioned in a telephone interview. “It was an excellent yr for girls’s basketball and ladies’s sports activities.”
Shohei Ohtani received the AP Male Athlete of the Year on Monday for the third time.
Clark broke the NCAA Division I profession scoring file for each women and men, ending her profession with 3,951 factors whereas guiding Iowa to its second consecutive nationwide championship sport. After her Hawkeyes misplaced to South Carolina for the title, Gamecocks coach Daybreak Staley took the mic throughout her group’s celebration and mentioned, “I need to personally thank Caitlin Clark for lifting up our sport.”
For all of the success Clark has had and the eye she has dropped at girls’s basketball, she is usually the centerpiece of debates and on-line toxicity towards her and different gamers within the league.
For her half, Clark has disavowed the poisonous discourse.
Lobo additionally has been impressed with the best way Clark, 22, has dealt with the stress and a focus that has come her method.
“I’d say she’s navigated it nearly flawlessly. She hasn’t had any huge missteps or misspeaks at a time you are underneath fixed scrutiny,” Lobo mentioned. “She’s appeared to say and do all the correct issues. That is simply unimaginable at a time when it is fixed consideration and scrutiny. She has not achieved something to tarnish this kind of delicate persona she has.”
As Clark dealt with the reward — and the backlash — in the course of the warmth of competitors, it was laborious for her to understand simply what she was ready accomplish over the previous yr. However after having time to mirror on the whirlwind tour, she appreciates those that had been there alongside her for the trip.
“I am grateful for the folks I acquired to do it with,” Clark mentioned. “A yr in the past I used to be nonetheless within the early a part of my senior yr in school. … How briskly issues change, and now I can see how nice a university season it was.”
“You would be remiss to not acknowledge how loopy her fan base is and the eyes she will get with every part she does,” mentioned Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton, who was usually noticed courtside at Clark’s Indiana Fever video games. “It is a completely different kind of recognition; she’s probably the most in style athletes on this planet. It isn’t simply girls’s sports activities anymore.
“It is actually cool to see and he or she simply handles it with such grace.”
Clark mentioned she enjoys spending time with followers at video games, normally taking a couple of minutes earlier than and after video games to signal autographs.
“For me it is nonetheless actually enjoyable,” she mentioned. “Whether or not it is 15 seconds or 10 seconds or 5 seconds could be very impactful in a younger lady and younger boy’s life. Seeing the followers going loopy an hour earlier than tipoff, I by no means take that with no consideration. That is tremendous cool, and I by no means need that to go away.”
After a sluggish begin to her WNBA profession, Clark finally discovered her stride there, too. She set the single-game help file with 19 and had 337 assists on the season to interrupt that mark as properly. Clark, identified for her logo-distance 3-pointers, was the quickest participant to achieve 100 3s when she did it in 34 video games, serving to Indiana attain the playoffs for the primary time since 2016.
Lobo, who received the AP Female Athlete of the Year award after lifting UConn to its first nationwide championship, was on the courtroom for launch of the WNBA two years later. The ESPN analyst sees Clark’s ascension as one thing completely different.
“She’s introduced unprecedented consideration each within the constructing, but in addition viewership to the game that was worthy of it however did not have it but,” Lobo mentioned. “There’s by no means been something like this.
“That timeframe from 1995 to ’97 was a child step within the development of all of it. This can be a large leap ahead. I’ve by no means seen something like this. There’s extra consideration then the sports activities ever had.”
The numbers have been record-breaking when Clark is a part of a broadcast:
– TV viewership for the WNBA was up 300% thanks largely to Clark, with ABC, CBS, ION, ESPN and ESPN2 all having file viewers when Fever video games had been on.
– The NCAA girls’s championship sport outdrew the boys’s sport on TV for the primary time within the sport’s 42-year historical past, with 18.9 million viewers tuning it to look at the occasion. It was the second-most-watched girls’s sporting occasion outdoors of the Olympics within the historical past of U.S. tv.
– The 2024 WNBA draft was probably the most watched in league historical past with 2.4 million viewers.
Clark credit the group of ladies athletes for the recognition improve of ladies’s sports activities, saying “we” did this or “we” did that when requested about it.
“It is fascinating, you do not all the time respect how many individuals 18 million is,” Clark mentioned. “You see that quantity in opposition to a university soccer sport or the Masters or no matter it’s so far as the largest sporting occasions in our nation and it places it in perspective. We outdrew the boys’s Ultimate 4.”