"She just had this kind of locked-in attitude": Caitlin Clark's high school coach recaps Indiana star's steadfast behavior amid Paris Olympics snub
Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark is having a sensational rookie season in the WNBA. Clark and Angel Reese are in the conversation to be this season's WNBA Rookie of the Year.
However, the 6-foot point guard did not make Team USA's roster for the Paris Olympics. Many basketball fans were disappointed and so was Kristin Meyer, Clark's high school coach. Meyer, who coached Clark at Dowling Catholic High, recently gave her opinion in an interview with Yahoo Sports.
Meyer said that Clark made remarkable progress in her development in her junior year after she was not selected for the USA Under-17 World Cup team during her sophomore year.
"She [Clark] always worked hard and loved being in the gym, but there was a different level of maturity to her that summer," Meyer said. "She just had this kind of locked-in attitude when she was in the gym. She was really driven to get better."
Caitlin Clark suffered another snub from the Team USA committee as the former Iowa phenom was excluded from the Olympic roster. After an amazing college career at Iowa, Clark declared for the 2024 WNBA draft and was picked by Indiana. She had a tough start on the struggling Fever team but made a huge improvement in her performance in the past two months.
Her midseason stats read 17.1 points, 8.2 assists and 5.8 rebounds per game. Clark also set a record for the most assists (10) in a WNBA All-Star game.
ESPN journalist criticizes Dawn Staley defending Caitlin Clark's Olympic snub
South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley justified Caitlin Clark's omission from Team USA's Olympic roster during an appearance on NBC coverage on Sunday.
"As a committee member, you’re charged with putting together best teams of players, the best talent," Staley told Mike Tirico. "Caitlin is just a rookie in the WNBA. Wasn’t playing bad, but wasn’t playing like she’s playing now.
"If we had to do it all over again, the way that she’s playing, she would be in really high consideration of making the team because she is playing head and shoulders above a lot of people."
Frank Isola from ESPN was not pleased with the way Staley responded and criticized the Olympic selection committee for not taking into consideration Caitlin Clark's records in college basketball.
"So leaving college basketball as the all-time leading scorer wasn’t taken into consideration?" Isola wrote on Twitter. "Reminder: it's not a WNBA All Star team or a Fading Legends team. It’s a national team."
Clark holds the record for the most points in NCAA Division I women's basketball history, scoring 3,951 points (28.42 PPG) over her four year collegiate career.