'Yeah, this needs to be celebrated'
Caitlin Clark's NCAA record gives fans - and the media - a night to remember
It was history.
It was a moment upon a moment upon a moment.
Caitlin Clark set the NCAA women’s basketball scoring record on Thursday night 2 minutes 12 seconds into the game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. With one of her trademark logo three-pointers, of course. And then went on and scored 41 more points to finish with 49.
I wasn’t there, day-job work conflicts and a killer cold kept me home but it was a joy to watch on TV, making sure my battery was charged by game time so I could text friends all over the country throughout and be entertained on Twitter/X (no, really, it CAN be entertaining).
The game drew no shortage of media from all across the country, but I’m happiest for my colleagues in the local media. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime story that they got in their own backyard, on their turf. What a treat.
And you know what? They did this on deadline. No massaging a story for months the way magazine writers get to do. Jeff Linder of the Cedar Rapids Gazette has been covering the team for 17 seasons. Last night, his first story from the game was posted before 11 p.m.
Writing on deadline is a skill. A crazy unimaginable one to many people. Years ago my then-boyfriend, a home interior painter, painted my living room for Valentine’s Day. He wasn’t in my life when I painted it myself about five years earlier.
“You didn’t do a very good job,” he said.
“Well, you go to a basketball game sometime,” I responded, “and 10 minutes after it’s over, write a story that is fit for publication in a newspaper, maybe even a national one. And all the words have to be spelled correctly because there will be no time to edit it.”
He got very quiet.
So here’s to the local and deadline writers who brought us a slice of history on Thursday night.
‘Anything can happen here’
Jeff Linder’s report in the Gazette ticks all the boxes. It sets a great scene for the game and the postgame. “And now, we return you to the remainder of your regularly scheduled women’s basketball season,” Jeff writes. “‘It’s been a little distracting, but a good distracting,’ (Iowa Coach Lisa) Bluder said. ‘Now it’s time to make our team better.’”
‘A magical, emotional, perfect night’
You can almost get emotional yourself reading Chad Leistikow’s column in the Des Moines Register. He gets into Bluder’s comments about how it has been important to remember that Caitlin Clark is a person beyond the basketball, something the former record-holder Kelsey Plum had said was a struggle that made the record chase a hard time for her.
‘Hey, if you’re going to have a night, have a night’
Another columnist, Mike Hlas of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, gives a sense of the ridiculousness of it all. That long shot to break the record and the 41 points that came after it to set a Carver-Hawkeye Arena record that her teammate Hannah Stuelke had just set last week. “Clark scored 49 points, the most by a Hawkeye woman in any game, any year, and the most scored in 41-year-old Carver by any woman, man or extraterrestrial.”
‘The most recognizable athlete in the nation at the moment’
If anyone is qualified to put Clark into sports historical perspective in Iowa, it’s the Register’s Randy Peterson. He’s in his 51st year covering sports in Des Moines, first for the Tribune and then the Register. He now covers Iowa State sports, but he was a longtime high school reporter who saw many of the state’s legends when they were just kids – with the exception of Bob Feller and Nile Kinnick. Randy knows.
‘She came out on a mission and was on fire’
Veteran sports writer Susan Harman has had a very Iowa career, working for the Des Moines Register, the Ames Tribune and the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Her retirement gig has been covering the Iowa women’s basketball team for Hawk Fanatic, a website launched by another veteran state sports writer, Pat Harty. Susan’s story gets into the perspective of the Michigan team; each member wrote a note of congratulations to Clark.
When Dan Gable talks, people listen
John Naughton, a fellow member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative with “My Life in Color,” was at the state wrestling meet and chatted with another Iowa legend, gold-standard wrestler and coach Dan Gable about Clark. “She is one of the greatest examples of bringing people together,” Gable said.
Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From A Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
Iowa Writers’ Collaborative
I’m happy to join fellow Iowa writers and journalists as part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. To receive a roundup of the week’s columns, subscribe to the Collaborative’s Sunday email.
Oh, I’m so sorry you missed the game! But I hear our mutual friend had a ball with your tickets!
I. Love. This.