After her WNBA season was cut short due to injuries, Caitlin Clark is back on the basketball court. The Indiana Fever star returned to action at the Team USA training camp held at Duke earlier this month.
Clark only played 13 games last season as she dealt with injuries to both her quad and groin. That included missing the All-Star Game, the final two months of the regular season and the playoffs.
Now that some more time has passed, she is finally starting to feel close to normal again. She detailed her recovery process during a recent appearance on the New Heights podcast with Jason and Travis Kelce.
“It was fun to get back out there,” she said of competing in the Team USA training camp. “It had been a minute. It was obviously a long and tough year of reoccurring injuries and you guys know how that goes. When you get one nagging thing it kind of leads to another. It wasn’t, obviously, how I envisioned it and it stunk, but we still kind of found a way. Our team, we had like six of our players go down with injuries. It was unreal. But we still had a great year. Made it to the semifinals and were like a game away from the Finals, so that was pretty impressive considering what we went through.
“But it was a long process just to get back on the court. Because when you have the groins and quads and whatever you’re dealing with, you don’t run for a while, so it’s weird learning to run again in a way.”
Clark was coming off of 2024 season in which season won Rookie of the Year. She averaged 19.2 points, 8.4 assists and 5.7 rebounds per game while shooting 34.4% from 3-point range.
The Fever made the playoffs for the second straight season this past year in spite of not only the injury to Caitlin Clark, but also others like Sophie Cunningham and Aari McDonald. They ultimately advanced to the semifinals and lost to the eventual WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces.
Clark spoke about the challenge of returning to action against the best of the best with Team USA as well as her goals moving forward. She hopes not only to return strong for the next WNBA season, but also to make the Team USA roster for the upcoming FIBA World Cup Tournament in September.
“I probably wouldn’t have wanted it any other way,” she said of making her return with Team USA. “You get thrown back out there with the best players in the world and you see you’re right where you were before you got hurt and it was only three days. So it was cool. It was at Duke, one of the most historic basketball places ever, so that was a pretty cool thing too. It kind of kicks off the next cycle of preparing for the Olympics and then we have the World Cup in 2026 at the end of September.
“So we’ll actually pause the WNBA season, very similar to like how we do when we have the Olympics, right before the playoffs and then we go play the World Cup. Which, technically, the World Cup in the past has been harder for us to win because there’s more teams that play in the World Cup than qualify for the Olympics. So hopefully I’m on the team for that, and obviously my goal is to be on the Olympic team in 2028. So it feels like it’s far away but it’s probably actually way closer than it sounds.”
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