Kendall Stanley: Potential galore
It won’t be that long before the world finds out how Caitlin Clark will fit into the Women’s National Basketball Association after being drafted first in the nation by the Indiana Fever. I’m betting record-setting viewers will find out.
Clark was THE player in college hoops this year, blowing by records at a pace that was, well, record-setting.
Along the way, she helped fill arenas wherever she played. Television coverage of this season’s schedule was over the top as well.
But there was something more than setting records and going to the NCAA finals for two years in a row that marked Caitlin Clark’s season — if ever there was a class act, she was it.
Sure there was a little trash talk with Angel Reese but come season’s end they both had great things to say about one another.
The rest of the time she comported herself with a maturity and humility that are easy to let fall by the wayside as stardom increases, which made her such a delight to see interacting with fans, especially young girls.
If she is remembered for anything in the future — and there will be plenty to remember — it will be her impact on women’s basketball.
Like Steph Curry, the woman can shoot the lights out. Her three-point bombs from logo land which she set up and fired off in the blink of an eye were thrilling to watch. If you were a defender and gave her a second of time, the ball was gone.
She wasn’t all a scoring show, racking up great stats for assists and rebounds. On the assist front, she fired passes that always went to the perfect spot for a teammate to handle which is an incredible skill all its own.
Now it is on to the pros, where some of the older ballers are telling her playing pro ball against real women isn’t the same as college ball.
Maybe not but talent and hard work, of which Clark has much, can take one far into a career.
Hopefully, her career will continue to do what many are hoping for – provide the impetus for a surge in interest in women’s sports, be it basketball or soccer, gymnastics or skiing. As these sports gain prominence, if that happens, the kind of money that now flows to male athletes will start coming the women’s way.
The women certainly showed the way during the basketball Final Four this year, with a large group of very talented teams playing some impressive, close-score games. TV viewership favored women.
And if you take a moment to ruminate on the women’s side of the voucher, the top coaches were (almost) all women. The lone male in the top groupings, Luigi "Geno" Auriemma, has been the incredibly successful head coach at UConn since 1985. Who is going to tell him to step aside?
You can’t really put the success of the WNBA entirely on the shoulders of Angel Reese, Clark, Kamilla Cardosa and the others coming out of the college ranks, but they are good and the more people watch them play the better it will be for women’s sports.
Whooosh!
A map popped up on Facebook the other day showing the current migration locations for hummingbirds. And yes, they were heading north and northeast.
Going along with that, was the whoosh of our neighbors heading north.
Yes folks, it’s time for the annual migration of the snowbirds, reviled for the traffic they generate, the hike in grocery prices that just happens to coincide with their arrival and the inability to find a parking spot at Fry’s or Safeway. And if you’re lucky enough to have a handicap sticker the joke is on you – everybody has one and there are only so many handicapped spots.
Our neighborhood of 12 units was all but empty by mid-April and the rest of us will be headed home by the end of the month.
For the snowbirds who leave because it’s getting a little too warm, this year was special as it only started to hit the 90s the third week of the month. March found us with more rain than normal and colder temperatures than normal.
There was snow on Mt. Wrightson when we got to Arizona the end of December, and snow lingered and was replenished many times over the winter. There was still snow on the higher elevations when we left which is unusual to say the least.
Soon enough scorching temperatures will return to the desert, and the snowbirds will remember why it was they headed north in the first place.
— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Kendall Stanley: Potential galore
