Caitlin Clark, Kate Martin reflect on Iowa legacies
The careers of Iowa stars Caitlin Clark and Kate Martin have come to a close.
After their national championship loss versus South Carolina, the next chapter for the Iowa Hawkeyes‘ legendary duo and for the program has arrived.
After playing in 139 games alongside one another, Clark and Martin guided Iowa to a regular season Big Ten championship, three Big Ten Tournament titles and a pair of Final Fours and national championship game appearances.
Clark’s school and national records are plentiful. Together, Clark and Martin turned Iowa and women’s basketball into a TV ratings success unlike ever before seen.
What do they feel their lasting legacies are?
“I don’t know if you can really describe and put it into words this legacy. Honestly, I just hope we’ve brought a lot of people joy and we’ve brought a lot of people together. I hear all the time about how many friends people have made in the stands just watching our games. We sold out every single home game this year at Carver.
“And everywhere we go, we have fans lining up wanting Caitlin’s autograph, our autograph. More than anything, our legacy is what we’ve brought to the state of Iowa, I think, and all the joy and the fun. It’s pretty cool to be coached by coach Bluder and the culture she’s built at Iowa. I think just watching us, you can see the joy that we have. I think that’s the main thing for our legacy,” Martin said.
Clark echoed those sentiments and shared some of what she’s proud of.
“I think this group has gone about it in the right way in every single thing that we’ve done in every phase of our life. I think that’s what you can be the most proud of. We truly have each other’s back. Maybe we weren’t always the most skilled. Maybe we weren’t always the tallest. Maybe we weren’t always the fastest, but we just believed. We knew we could be in these moments. We trusted one another. That took a couple of years to get to that point.
“There’s been so many great Iowa women’s basketball players to come before us and allow this program to be really, really good when Kate and I and everyone else stepped on campus. And I feel like we took it to a whole other level. I feel like our program is in good hands moving forward,” Clark said.
The two-time Naismith Trophy recipient assumes fans will remember the two Final Four trips, but she hopes fans remember how those moments made them and their families feel.
“I think more than anything people will probably remember our two Final Fours and things like that. But people aren’t going to remember every single win or every single loss. I think they’re just going to remember the moments that they shared at one of our games or watching on TV or how excited their young daughter or son got about watching women’s basketball. I think that’s pretty cool.
“Those are the things that mean the most to me when people come up to me, and, I don’t really get offended when people say I never watched women’s basketball before. I think, one, you’re a little late to the party, yes. But, two, that’s cool. We’re changing the game. We’re attracting more people to it. But at the same time, those little things are, I think, the moments that we’ll remember forever,” Clark said.
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