Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark has been named TIME’s Athlete of the Year. Clark is the first WNBA player to earn the honor.
After her record-breaking collegiate career at the University of Iowa, Clark, 22, helped to increase the popularity of the WNBA and women’s college basketball. Clark played in 139 career games with the Iowa Hawkeyes, scoring 3,951 points along with 1,144 assists, 990 rebounds, and 210 steals. Clark shot 46.2 percent in her career at Iowa and knocked down 37.7 percent of her three-point attempts. In her final season as an Iowa Hawkeye, Clark set the NCAA Division I women’s basketball scoring record and then broke Hall of Famer Pete Maravich’s record across all of Division I.
In her first WNBA season for the Fever, Clark played in 40 games, averaged 19.2 points, 8.4 assists, 5.7 rebounds, and 1.3 steals per game, and shooting 41.7 percent from the floor and 34.4 percent from the three-point line. Clark took home the Rookie of the Year award in her debut season with the Fever, and was named to the All-WNBA first team (the first rookie to do so since 2008) this past season.
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