Caitlin Clark Comes Clean on Ditching Niele Ivey’s Notre Dame for Iowa Hawkeyes

One of the biggest sports sensations in recent years, the 2024 Rookie of the Year has been making waves. Recently named the AP female athlete of the year, the point guard from Iowa has a bright future ahead. What sets her apart is her extraordinary talent that allowed her to choose between multiple teams for her NCAA basketball career, and she ultimately decided to join the Iowa Hawkeyes. Ever wondered why?

In a recent episode of his podcast New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce, Caitlin Clark shared about her decision to choose The Iowa Hawkeyes in 2020 over Notre Dame. Despite visiting Notre Dame multiple times, she trusted her intuition and decided against joining the Indiana-based team. She said, “It’s Notre Dame; it has that tradition. They’ve had so many great players go through there in every single sport. But I just knew, I could feel it in my gut that I was not supposed to go there.”

Apart from that, there were other reasons that influenced her decision. Being from her home state and just a two-hour drive from where she grew up, she felt it was the perfect distance where her parents couldn’t show up unannounced but also allowed her to go back home when needed. It seems like being a homebody also played a role in her choice.

Choosing Iowa has proven to be a great decision for Clark. She helped the team reach the NCAA Women’s Tournament Final for the first time in program history. Her standout performance in her junior year with a 41-point triple-double against Louisville made history in basketball. As a sophomore, she averaged 27 points and surpassed Pete Maravich for an all-time NCAA points record, a feat that had stood for over five decades.

How a close-to-home choice became Clark’s historic basketball stint

During her time with the Iowa team, Clark also set a record for the most three-pointers in a single season in the Big Ten conference. Her choice to join the Iowa Hawkeyes in 2020 was a mix of intuition, practicality, and a desire to leave a mark. And after four years, it’s clear that she has achieved just that.