New buzz on the ball court

Rookie Caitlin Clark is transforming women’s basketball, thrilling joyful fans with new views of excellence, agility, and equality.

The Monitor's View

Remember Lynette Woodard? How about Katherine Johnson or Nona Gaprindashvili?

Limit-shattering women too often require male reference points to lodge in public thought. Ms. Johnson is to Albert Einstein in physics as Ms. Gaprindashvili is to Garry Kasparov in chess. Yet that may now be about to change. The reason: the star-bursting arrival of what already looks like a paradigm-shifting cultural phenomenon.

Google it. The Caitlin Clark effect.

The most talked-about athlete in America right now is female. Caitlin Clark strode into the Women’s National Basketball Association this week clothed in superlatives. The highest scorer – male or female – in the history of the NCAA. The No. 1 draft pick.

Her impact on the court draws comparisons to male players. She shoots 3-pointers like Steph Curry. Yet her “effect” resides more off the court, in the power of sport to promote equality through new views of human achievement and the universal qualities that enable it.

“There is something that happens in the way that men view women when women are seen to perform under pressure at a really high level physically,” said sports columnist Sally Jenkins in a Washington Post podcast following Ms. Clark’s home opener in Indiana on Thursday night. “There’s a credibility. ... That physical competency and emotional competency under pressure, it makes it easier for men to envision women driving aircraft carriers on a midnight shift.”

Ms. Clark follows a handful of pioneering women who used their athletic prowess to compel social change. Tennis great Billie Jean King and soccer star Megan Rapinoe championed human dignity in their advocacy for equal pay and LGBTQ+ rights. Serena Williams and gymnast Simone Biles broke racial barriers and voiced compassion for those struggling with mental health.

Now comes Ms. Clark. She is already changing the economics of the game by forcing scrutiny on the unequal salary structures of men’s and women’s professional basketball. Branding and ticketing companies are changing their business models to accommodate skyrocketing demand. Leadership experts are studying her game for new insights into what brings success.

More importantly, as Ms. Jenkins noted, she is erasing the notion that athletic excellence has different levels based on gender. She is “one of the best college basketball players to ever play,” Patrick Mahomes, quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, posted on X back in February. In a poll by The Athletic last month, players in the NBA, the men’s top league, ranked Ms. Clark their second-favorite athlete in any other professional sports league, male or female. They didn’t stop there. Five other female basketball players earned votes – and respect – from their male counterparts.

Back to Lynette Woodard. For more than 40 years before Ms. Clark came along, she was the top-scoring female college basketball player of all time. She was often remembered in the same sentence with the men’s top scorer, Pete Maravich. Now she is compared to the woman who broke her record. Perhaps one day, the next Steph Curry will be called the Caitlin Clark of his generation.