Caitlin Clark's best WNBA game caps big weekend for women's sports in Indianapolis

INDIANAPOLIS — It was reality, but it might as well have been a dream. It’s what Title IX advocates, and parents coaching their daughters, and, really, the entire nation has been waiting for, and it happened within five city blocks across 18 hours Saturday night to Sunday afternoon right here in the middle of America.

At 8:40 p.m. local time on Saturday, Katie Ledecky, the greatest female swimmer in history, touched the wall to win the 400 freestyle at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials and qualify for her fourth Olympic team as a raucous crowd of 20,689 rose to its feet in an NFL stadium, the Indianapolis Colts’ Lucas Oil Stadium. It was the grandest stage a swimmer has ever had, and Ledecky deserved every bit of it.

Move ahead to Sunday. At 2:05 p.m., the clock ran down to zero and a sellout crowd of 17,274 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse stood and roared as Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever defeated Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky, 91-83, in Clark’s best game of the still relatively young WNBA season.

Sometimes sellouts aren’t really sellouts, but this one was. Every seat, every one, up to the tip-top of the arena, was packed, and when Clark nailed her third three-pointer of the game with 3:06 left to play to put Indiana ahead by seven, 84-77, the noise and energy was electric. 

I hadn’t seen or heard anything like that since, well, 18 hours earlier, when Ledecky drew such a massive ovation in her stadium about a 12-minute walk from Clark’s. 

So often we as a sports nation are on a first-name basis with our favorite athletes: Tiger, LeBron, Kobe, Michael. Occasionally, a woman sneaks into the mix. Serena comes immediately to mind. 

Well, if we ever doubted there would be more, we can doubt no more. Katie. Caitlin. Angel.

While Clark looked so comfortable — Iowa comfortable — playing all but three minutes of the game and scoring a game-high 23 points with nine assists and eight rebounds, her longtime rival Reese was continuing to play impressively under the boards with 13 rebounds and 11 points. Linked as they are from their college days, most likely now for the length of their pro careers, they both are thriving in the WNBA. 

There was a moment Sunday bringing them together that will ensure that this rivalry carries on and on and on, which is a good thing even if this particular moment was not. With 2:53 to go in the third period of a close game, Reese clobbered Clark in the head as she was driving to the basket. The foul was ruled a Flagrant 1 and Clark, steady-eddy at the line, made both free throws to build the Fever lead to three. 

Asked what was going through her mind after Reese’s flagrant foul, Clark said, “What’s going through my mind is I need to make these two free throws. That’s all I’m thinking about. It’s just a part of basketball. It is what it is.”

For her part, Reese had a few choice words about the officiating. “It was a basketball play. I can’t control the refs. They affected the game obviously a lot today. I’m always going for the ball. Y’all are going to play that clip 20 times before Monday.”

More like 20 times before dinner, and probably 200 times before Monday. But that’s okay. That’s good actually. 

This is women’s sports now, and it has something for everyone. It’s a time and a moment long overdue, but it’s here now — and I mean right here in the heart of Indianapolis.

“It’s really cool,” Clark said when I asked her and her teammates about this confluence of events in town. “I was somebody that grew up loving women’s athletics, whether it was soccer, whether it was basketball, whatever it was. I always had it on. I always wanted to support it. 

“So I think it just shows when given an opportunity, women’s sports are certainly an amazing thing and fun to watch. They’re only on the rise. I think people are finally starting to realize how great of a product that can be shown, they’re given an opportunity to play on national television or play in big stadiums where people can buy tickets and I think once people come and watch one time, they can’t get enough of it and they continue to come back.”

Her teammate Aliyah Boston, who had 19 points and 14 rebounds on Sunday as her game has come alive, added the perfect coda:

“It’s amazing that younger girls now have so many more athletes to look up to, and say ‘I want to be like her.’”

All of this was happening exactly one week before June 23. That’s significant because that’s the day Title IX turns 52. Has there ever been a better early birthday present?