Caitlin Clark at Iowa WBB welcome home event on UI pentacrest April 2023. Photo credit: Trish Nelson

Blog for Iowa is a political blog but it’s also a blog about Iowa, about the community that is Iowa. The community that has somehow of late gotten lost in bad politics.

So I would like to write about Caitlin Clark and the Iowa women’s basketball team, the women who have magically brought Iowans together during these trying times. There is so much that she and the team have given Iowans that I doubt I can adequately express the massive impactfulness of it.  Caitlin’s class, grace, lifting up others, understanding that it is larger than basketball, having a larger purpose. Everyone paying attention soaked up all the goodness like sponges. Everyone I know is feeling sadness, loss, gratitude now that it’s over and Caitlin is moving onto the next part of her journey.  Everyone has a personal story about how Caitlin has affected them. This is mine.

I played girls basketball in junior high and high school. Six on six back in the day. I grew up in Small Town, Iowa. This is what I remember about playing girls basketball in those days.

I graduated from high school in 1972, before there was a size classification system and the year Title IX passed but hadn’t yet gone into effect. In those days the bigger schools – not necessarily really big schools but definitely bigger than ours – had the great teams and got the flowers. The schools that made it to the state tournament year after year. The schools you see on the IPTV special documentary about the history of girls basketball in Iowa. That was not us.

We had a team and a coach but in those days the boys teams were the only thing that our town really cared about. Football more than basketball, but definitely boys.

One memory I have is of when the boys basketball team got new warm-ups, the girls team was given the boys’ old ones. We wore them at games and they were obviously way too big. It was a budget thing, they said. There just wasn’t enough money for warm-ups for both the boys and girls teams. And we were happy to have them! We thought it was cool to get to wear the boys’ old warm-ups. I look at that differently now of course.

I loved basketball. During summer before I was old enough to be on the school team, I practiced shooting over at our neighbors’ garage hoop. Our next door neighbor, the high school football coach, occasionally spotted me out there and showed me how to do a 2-dribble lay up, the proper shooting form and how to use my left hand. He said, “if you keep practicing and using your left hand like that you’re going to be a hell of a ball player some day.”

That was all the encouragement I needed and frankly, that’s about all the encouragement I got.

I played basketball on our school’s team from 7th grade through 12th. I was a starter all four years in high school. I wasn’t great but for our small school I was pretty good. I had a reliable mid-range jump shot, was our team’s designated free throw shooter and could drive to the bucket left-handed and right-handed. During summer between my junior and senior year our coach opened the gym every weekday morning for a couple of hours for anyone who wanted to come in and shoot.  Most of the time, I was the only one that showed up.

By the time my class graduated, we had moved from finishing at the bottom of the conference to fourth place, behind three larger schools who often did well in the post season. This was actually a tremendous achievement for our school after years of being in the basement, but hardly anyone noticed. If they did, they didn’t say anything to me or my teammates, so we didn’t think it was anything.

Our team like every other girls h.s. basketball team in the state, made annual trips to Des Moines to watch the girls’ state basketball tournament. None of us was really interested in the games. We took a cab from Veterans Auditorium to Younkers and went shopping instead. We hit record stores and ate lunch at Bishop’s Buffet.  We had a great time running around downtown Des Moines unsupervised.

We were disconnected from our state’s celebration of the sport we participated in.  I see now that was because we knew we would never be that good or get to play at that level. As all of Iowa was going mad over the girls tourney, it was hard to be interested when no one was ever going to be thrilled about or even notice what we did. It was like we didn’t exist. State tournament time was actually kind of painful.

Not resentful. Not complaining.  That kind of success and support was simply irrelevant to us.  Why look at travel brochures of exotic places you will never go.  That’s just how it was in our small town in Iowa in 1972.

After high school I mostly forgot about basketball. Even though I attended and have two degrees from the University of Iowa, I didn’t follow women’s college basketball. I followed men’s basketball and men’s sports like most everyone else.

I felt alienated from women’s basketball. Until my brother asked me if I had seen Caitlin Clark play. I had not. So I started watching the Iowa women’s team during Caitlin’s sophomore year.

Like everyone else, it didn’t take long to get hooked and fall in love with the sport again and this amazing team.

Somewhere along the way during their inspiring, magical run, a completely unexpected thing happened. After all these years I began to notice a sense of validation and pride for having been an Iowa girls basketball player. Rather than thinking it was nothing, I can feel like it was something. Something of value. Even if we weren’t great. Especially because we weren’t great. We still played, we still loved the game and we still tried to get better. And we did. Whether we were recognized or not.

This was the theme coming from Caitlin, this champion, record breaking,  greatest of all time basketball player, Caitlin Clark.  She says it’s not just about winning. It’s about doing something together, being a good person, striving to be better. It’s about the relationships and memories you will carry forward the rest of your life.

I got a Facebook message from one of my old high school teammates who I haven’t seen since then. She doesn’t do much social media but when I posted something about the Iowa women’s basketball team she put a heart on it. She had been following Caitlin from where she lives in Georgia.

I think I can speak on behalf of the girls that were on my team in saying thank you, Caitlin, Kate Martin, Gabby Marshall, Molly Davis, Sharon Goodman and all the players that will be back next year. You’ll never truly know the impact you have had.

There will never be another Caitlin Clark. But I’ll be following Lisa Bluder and the Iowa women’s basketball team as well as the WNBA from now on.