Former Iowa women’s basketball player and current WNBA rookie star Caitlin Clark has created a rise in attention given to women’s sports.

Out of 23 WNBA games that drew in over 1 million viewers, Clark was an attribute to 20 of them. This was the first season since 2008 that a WNBA game had averaged over 1 million viewers.

Clark was a shining reason that people chose to watch women’s sports. Her fame brought the attention that women’s sports needed, and in particular, women’s basketball.

On a list of the most-watched WNBA games from the 2024 season, Clark was seen in the top 15 games. On September 25, the Indiana Fever vs. the  Connecticut Sun had 2.54 million viewers. 

This amount of attention that women’s basketball received was not only from current basketball players. The games were also watched by families; apart of those families are younger kids, specifically daughters who now will look up to Clark and strive to become the greatness that she is seen as.

According to West Chicago Community High School girls’ basketball coach Jennifer Ward, Clark has reshaped women’s basketball and brought it back to the attention it needed after it was going through a phase of declining interest. 

“Caitlin Clark reshaped the way that women’s basketball proceeds because there was a cap before, like there was only so far a woman could go, only so far back a woman could shoot, and now that she’s broken all those barriers, little kids are looking at her and saying ‘Hey, I want to be her,’” Ward said.

Mark Fitzgerald, West Chicago Community High School girls’ basketball coach, echoed these thoughts with insight on how Clark effectively rose numbers for WEGO’s basketball teams as well. 

“The interest in the game, particularly with the grade school and middle school students, has definitely improved. The timing on this could not have been better. Our program was struggling to attract a lot of players, but this year, according to our AD, the turnout for tryouts was the best in 20 years in terms of number of registrations. This has enabled us to have three teams: JV1, JV2, and Varsity for the first time in six years,” Fitzgerald said.

Players at the high school level notice and admire Clark’s talents and success in bringing attention to women’s sports.

“Caitlin Clark has changed how people view women’s basketball. More people are showing up to watch and support women in basketball because of her,” senior varsity basketball player, Sneha George, said.