Caitlin Clark explains reason she felt ‘lucky’ after Team USA Olympics snub

Caitlin Clark, the WNBA’s Rookie of the Year, has confessed that she felt “lucky” to have been overlooked for Team USA selection for last year’s Paris Olympics, as it provided her with a much-needed respite.

Prior to her WNBA career, Clark was already a sensation in women’s basketball, having shattered numerous records with the Iowa Hawkeyes.

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Despite her stellar performances, she was surprisingly left out of the 12-player roster for the Olympics. Looking back on the omission in 2024, Clark expressed relief at the chance to take a step back, stating: “It’s going to be good for me to do my own thing and have my own space. I kind of want to just stay out of the spotlight.”

 

On the New Heights podcast with NFL stars Travis and Jason Kelce, Clark further discussed the unexpected advantage of the Olympic break, which allowed her to rest during a demanding season.

The 22 year old revealed: “It’s just different but I feel lucky too because we had the Olympic break so I got a month off in the middle of the season.”


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“We had to pause the WNBA season because the 12 girls go and play in the Olympics and everybody else, you’re not doing much. I got like a month off, which I really needed obviously, because I had been playing basketball for like a year straight. But, it’s obviously so much different from the NFL or the NBA.”

Team USA coach Cheryl Reeve has been candid about the limited control she holds in selecting the national team. Revealing her stance, Reeve stated: “I think what people don’t get about it… is the coach of the national team truly has no power in the selection of the team.”

She also expressed frustration that Minnesota Lynx’s ace Kayla McBride was overlooked, despite standout camp performances, sharing: “I thought K-MAC had a tremendous camp and should have gone with us to Sydney and had no indication that anyone felt [differently], especially from our staff and some of the committee was in our meetings.”

Adding to the disappointment, Reeve elaborated: “It felt as if we all felt the same that K-MAC had a great camp, and not that she’d make the final roster because she still had to go to Sydney and make that final cut, [but] I learned at the 11th hour that they cut my player. And so I said to K-MAC, if there’s ever a time for people to understand that the coach has no say in it, this is one of those times.”

 

Star athlete Clark also discussed the rapid shift from college basketball to the pros, noting the nearly non-existent break in between, “I think it was good a little bit too. You don’t have time to overthink things, it’s just like boom, boom, boom and onto the next.

“But at the same time, I feel like I never really ended the chapter of college, I feel like I left and [WNBA happened]. You don’t have a lot of time to think about it so, I think that’s definitely the weirdest part of women’s professional basketball and college basketball too – it’s just that change, but that’s obviously how it has to be too.”