Iowa honors Caitlin Clark by removing its number and suspending it in the rafters

Iowa City, Iowa (AP) – Caitlin Clark was not back in his home arena to play a game.

However, the “butterflies” said the former goalkeeper of Iowa, were quite similar.

Clark returned to the Carver-Hawkeye Arena of Iowa on Sunday so that his number 22 retired during a ceremony after the 76-67 of the Hawkeyes. Win on N ° 4 USCA season after completing his historic university career.

“I feel like I already have these butterflies in the stomach when you enter here,” said Clark at a pre-match press conference. “Not so much for a basketball match now, but obviously just to be with everyone and to enjoy this environment. I don’t have to compete for 40 minutes, even if I want me to be. I think it will certainly be a little more emotional than I do not have to compete. »»

Clark was in Center runs with his family while n ° 22 went up in the rafters. She smiled throughout the ceremony.

Jersey’s retirement has crowned a historic career for Clark at Iowa. She has become the top scorer of all time in university basketball while leading the Hawkeyes to consecutive appearances in the NCAA National Championship match in the past two seasons.

A closed window crowds of 14,998 included Lisa Bluder, the former Clark coach at Iowa and Stephanie White, Clark’s current coach with the WNBA Indiana fever. The fever will play an exhibition match at Iowa next season.

The former teammates of Iowa Kate Martin and Gabbie Marshall were on seats on the ground alongside the former talk show David Letterman. The USC coaches and players stayed on the field after the match to attend the ceremony.

“I am sure it was not cheap to enter,” joked Clark during the ceremony.

Iowa coach Jan Jensen spoke of seeing Clark for the first time as a West of West of the Dowling High School monks.

“Our staff, we have concluded a pact that we were going to do everything we could to be the last,” said Jensen. “And we are so grateful that we were the last standing. Caitlin, it is really generational. She changed the world.

“The positive image you have brought to this basketball program, this universe, this state and women’s basketball on a national scale, is unshakable,” said Bluder. “I spent my entire career trying to empower young women. This is what it is. But you have done more than that in the past four years, more than anyone can imagine. »»

Clark thought before the match on her time with the Hawkeyes, when she was one of teams that reached four NCAA tournaments and won three Big Ten tournament titles.

“The victory came because of the great culture we had,” she said. “And for me, I hope this is the thing that always remains intact, and I know that it will be the case, because of the large coach staff that we have and the type of players that they are here. We had altruistic players. We had players who did not care about the number of points you went to score. They will do everything they could for your teammates. They were going to hold their responsible teammates. And I think it’s an art lost at university these days, and you don’t always see that.

Clark knows that she is under a constant media projector these days, that he participates in concerts or that he joins Taylor Swift in a suite in a eliminatory match of Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL. She said she understood criticism from attention.

“I have the impression that one of my biggest skills is that I really don’t care,” said Clark. “I don’t care – I believe in me. I trust myself. I trust my teammates. I try to instill them. I am confident in the coaches of any team in which I was in, whether it be here, whether it is with fever now, and that you just count on these people. No one can enter your locker room. Everyone thinks they know everything and have an answer, but it’s just not reality. »»

The Clark jersey was suspended in the rafters the same day as the South Carolina Jersey de A’ja Wilson retired. They both bore 22 in college.

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