Caitlin Clark’s smallest fans spark youth craze on deep 3s and No. 22 jerseys

"Since watching her, we can’t go a day without a Caitlin Clark mention."

Caitlin Clark speaks to the media Friday. Andy Lyons/Getty Images

By Grace Raynor / The Athletic, New York Times Service

March 30, 2024

8 minutes to read

As athletics coordinator for the Cedar Rapids Parks and Recreation Department in eastern Iowa, Grant Weber oversees the youth basketball program. He has been noticing a trend over these past couple of years.

“We don’t do numbers on our jerseys because they are reversible and add a lot of cost,” Weber said. “But we had a ton of kids at the beginning of the year ask if they could be 22.”

He said three parents paid for No. 22 to be put on their children’s jerseys anyway. “Luckily, they were all on different teams, so we didn’t have too many Caitlin Clarks all on the same team,” he said.

Clark has become a household name across the country. When she’s not splashing deep 3s for Iowa, she’s starring in State Farm commercials. When she’s not casually flipping behind-the-back passes, she’s signing autographs.

But as the Hawkeyes prepare for a Sweet 16 matchup against Colorado on Saturday, it’s the young girls in Iowa — Clark’s home state — who are feeling particularly excited. Jordan Bleil, athletic supervisor for youth sports at the Coralville Parks & Recreation Department, just outside Iowa City, said the department has seen a 35% increase in participation among girls in the basketball program since 2019-20.

“I just had this skills-and-drills program,” said Adriana Mafra, youth and adult sports coordinator at the Burlington Area YMCA, “and 80% were girls. It was amazing.”

Never mind that Clark’s skill set is otherworldly, possibly the best these girls will see in their lifetimes — they are her and she is them.

“In Iowa,” said Justin Flaws, the girls basketball coach at Carlisle High School, “you grow up wanting to shoot logo 3s right now. It’s pretty cool.”

‘Something She’s Never Seen Before’

Lennon Rink was 3 years old on July 8, 2021, when she started her first week of chemotherapy at the University of Iowa Hospitals.

Lennon has a genetic disorder called NF1 that caused gliomas, or tumors, on both of her optic nerves. She ultimately needed 80 weeks of chemotherapy through Oct. 21, 2022, finishing when she was 5.

When her parents first learned of their daughter’s diagnosis, they feared she might lose her vision. So they made it a point to expose Lennon to some of the world’s most beautiful sights: sunsets, oceans, Clark on a basketball court.

“It’s like watching a superstar,” said her father, Mike. “It’s just a different type of person, player and athlete.”

Lennon, now 6, is almost completely blind in her right eye but can see fully out of her left. She didn’t have much interest in basketball until her father started putting Clark’s games on the family’s television late last season. Now, she can’t get enough, gleefully showing her fellow kindergartners pictures of her at Carver-Hawkeye Arena or filling them in on the latest intel she’s thrilled to have just received — that Clark has a boyfriend.

She draws pictures of Clark, writes about her often and has even started shooting hoops in the backyard.

“We were watching the Iowa game, and she went out and she asked us to lower the hoop, and she went out and shot baskets,” Mike Rink said. “She came back in and she said, ‘I made 24, Dad — 24 shots!’

“And she’s pretty good at it. I’m really surprised with her only having the one eye. She’s more accurate than I ever would have thought that she could be.”

The Rinks live in Ankeny, Iowa, about an hour and 45 minutes west of Iowa City, but they have family within walking distance of the university who love to help get Lennon tickets. Rink snapped a picture of his daughter sobbing when she unsuccessfully tried to get Clark’s autograph after Iowa beat Illinois on Feb. 25.

The next week, her father bought some last-minute tickets for the Hawkeyes’ matchup against Ohio State on Senior Day — when Clark broke Pete Maravich’s scoring record — and hoisted his daughter over the front row of the stands just behind Iowa’s bench so she would have a better chance of scoring Clark’s signature this time. Lennon got the autograph, looking mesmerized to be in Clark’s presence.

“She was so amazed to see her and so excited, and you can see that in her eyes,” Rink said. “She is seeing something she’s never seen before.”

Next up for Lennon, after a regularly scheduled MRI: rec league basketball. She’s already practicing.

“There’s more basketball in her life now,” Rink said. “Since watching her, we can’t go a day without a Caitlin Clark mention.”

Shoot like Caitlin

On a February night in Coralville, Bryan Goettel went to pick up his 12-year-old daughter, Addy, from a friend’s house. It was 6 p.m., dark and balmy. But Addy wasn’t ready to leave just yet.

Addy and her friend, Katie Heenan, had spent part of the afternoon riding bikes before they got bored and pivoted to playing basketball in Katie’s yard. They created a shooting game together, in which they would each attempt four shots apiece from progressively deeper spots on the driveway. But it wasn’t just any shooting game.

Both girls have seen Clark play live with their families — one of the many perks of living locally. So, for their game, they assigned variations of Clark’s name to different shooting spots.

“So we started with ‘Caitlin.’ And then ‘Clark.’ ’22.’ And then if you made a 3-pointer, because it’s her signature, it would be ‘Caitlin Clark 22,’” Katie said.

The first shot — “Caitlin” — was a layup, Addy said. “Clark” was a free throw, before they worked their way back to the imaginary 3-point line.

When Bryan arrived to pick up his daughter, Addy consecutively hit all four of her shots for the first time since they had started playing the game about 90 minutes earlier.

“I felt like Caitlin Clark,” Addy said. “Inspired.”

“There’s nothing that exemplifies more the impact that Caitlin is having on little girls than a moment like that,” Goettel said. “Since really the beginning of the season, I’ve had this nostalgic feeling, and obviously, selfishly, enjoying the ride. But seeing it through the lens of my daughter is infinitely more special and powerful. I haven’t taken for granted one second how lucky we are.”

‘I’m Caitlin Clark!’

Jensen Flaws was nearing her third birthday when she expressed an interest in basketball for the first time.

“At 3 years old, no kid is genuinely invested,” said Justin Flaws, her father. “But I had just come home from school, and she ran and got the basketball and was like, ‘Hey, I’m Caitlin Clark!,’ and went and made a shot. It was a cool moment for me as a dad because we hadn’t had that moment yet.”

That’s the thing about Clark, who, in addition to creating core memories for parents and daughters, is introducing this generation of basketball fans to the sport when they’re still toddlers.

Jensen was first exposed to this Iowa team largely because of some of her older cousins, who eat, breathe and sleep Clark’s daily happenings.

Flaws and his coaching staff have a small basketball hoop in the gym that they can lower to 3 feet for coaches’ children to play with, but the real fun is in the Flaws family’s dining room by Jensen’s red-and-blue Little Tikes goal.

“We’ve got lines taped out in our dining room where the 3-point line is,” Flaws said. “So she knows exactly where it is.”

When she’s not putting up her own shots, Jensen can be seen in the stands of her father’s varsity games, cheering on his players and holding up three fingers every time one of them hits a shot from deep. Carlisle High finished eighth in the state for 3-pointers made and 10th for 3-point attempts this season, Flaws said, making a school-record 155 shots from deep.

“There’s no mistaking why the 3-point jump has happened,” Flaws said. “It’s noticeable in the fact that the 3-point line isn’t good enough anymore. It needs to be 3, 4 feet behind the 3-point line. The deep 3 is pretty cool now.”

It’s not just the shooting

Macy Comito plays for the same grassroots organization — All Iowa Attack — that Clark played for before she enrolled at Iowa. Comito, a 5-foot-10 point guard at Carlisle High, where Flaws coaches, is the first to admit that she might not be quite the scorer Clark is.

But the prospect in the class of 2026 has long admired the way Clark facilitates as one of college basketball’s most impressive passers. “Her floor vision is a really big part of her game,” Comito said. “So I try to implement that into mine.”

Comito didn’t become a college basketball fan until middle school, but once she got hooked on the sport, she decided she wanted to learn how to throw a behind-the-back pass. Clark, who leads the nation with 8.8 assists per game, was part of the reason.

“It’s something you always work on,” said Comito, who has scholarship offers from Bradley, Eastern Illinois, Marquette, Drake, Green Bay and South Dakota. “But then to see it done in a game, it’s like, ‘OK. If she can do this, I want to try it.’”

It took Comito two years to perfect the pass, and she attempted it in a game for the first time as an eighth grader. Try No. 1 was unsuccessful. But it worked the second time — in transition with a two-on-one advantage.

“It’s an everyday thing for her,” Flaws said. “It’s just as easy as a bounce pass or a chest pass.”

For as much as Clark’s scoring has inspired the young girls in Iowa, her passing has had just as much — if not more — of an impact.

Tyler Headlee has worked at Kingdom Hoops, another grassroots organization in Iowa, for the past 12 years. Clark had 28 points against Michigan on March 9, but it was her 15 assists that really amazed him.

“We talk about that with young girls all the time: ‘Some day, if you want to be a high schooler, if you want to play as a freshman, that’s the goal, then how do you get on the floor?’” he said. “You get on the floor by being able to create other ways of impacting the game, and a lot of those are her passing.”

James Postman, a seventh-grade coach in the Iowa City Community School District, agreed.

“One of the things that I’ve noticed, especially with this year’s team, is their unselfishness. Moving and sharing the ball,” he said. “And I think sometimes that gets overlooked with Caitlin.”

Mafra, whose daughter, Aaliyah Guyton, committed to Iowa in September, feels the same way. “It’s not just her shooting. It’s the way she makes her team play.”

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Caitlin Clark’s smallest fans spark youth craze on deep 3s and No. 22 jerseys