Caitlin Clark has been making WNBA defenders look silly. Routinely, that is.
That exact word, in fact, fits better than most realize. After all, this has been her routine for over a decade.
Go back to the point guard's eighth-grade days, especially to one particular play unfolding during that time, and you'll see it.
It's all there in Christine Brennan's book , "On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports."
YouTube is loaded with clips of Clark torching other players. Or more accurately, her victims. Most of it dates back to after 2024, right after the Hawkeyes product went first overall in the WNBA Draft.
Here's the thing. That eighth-grade play would fit right into the same reel.
As Brennan writes, it unfolded in a gym packed with 100 college coaches. Back then, Clark's coach was Dickson Jensen. He remembered how she proved to every coach in the gym that it had been worth making the trip.
Two defenders, he recounted, had trapped his former AAU player in the corner. There was no way out. Not if you're Clark, though. That said, she bounced the ball off one of their legs. Grabbed her own pass. Then forced her way through both bodies anyway.
Sports have no shortage of terms for what Clark did to those trying — and failing — to defend her. She sent them to the hot dog stand. Or she sent them to grab popcorn. Jensen's version?
"They were kind of frozen, still standing in the corner, guarding a shadow," he said. "Caitlin was there one second and gone the next. It was like they were guarding a ghost."
Clark pulling off that streetball-type play, which Jensen said was completely legal, right there and then? Impressive. Still, it would have been pointless if the outcome hadn't benefited her team. So how did it end?
Jensen can't even answer that one.
"I turned around to my coaches," Dickson said, "and was like, 'Did we all just see what we just saw?' I turned my head and missed whatever happened."
Fair enough. Some plays you don't need to watch all the way through.
Take Stephen Curry, for instance. The Golden State Warriors legend lets a three go. He then turns and starts jogging back on defense. He, and everybody else knows. By then, the ball has already swished through the net.
Clark did much the same back in eighth grade. That said, it's easy to guess how the possession ended. She's averaging 22.1 points a night for the Indiana Fever , after all.
Years later, Jensen still smiles when telling the story. He called the whole thing "phenomenal."
Clark's former coach especially marveled at the instincts, the desire to win and the creativity she already showed. As only an eighth-grader, that was.
Nothing has changed about those impressive traits since then, he said. That's why CC is " so different than any other player we've ever seen in the women's game."
This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Sep 5, 2026, where it first appeared in the Off The Court section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
