Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar

by Howard Megdal

Combining modern reportage with historical revelations, a multifaceted portrait of Caitlin Clark’s game-changing superstardom and the cultural foundation it was built upon

Caitlin Clark has established herself as one of the global faces of the WNBA and has ignited popular interest in women’s sports. Her ascent to dominance and international celebrity represents the continuation of a surprisingly deep lineage for women’s basketball in the state of Iowa where Clark was born and raised, and where she wrote her name throughout the NCAA history books as a Hawkeye.

Spanning 100 years and several generations, Becoming Caitlin Clark traces the arc between the revered women who played the wildly popular game of 6-on-6 basketball in the 1920s and Clark in the 2020s, examining her fame and style of play in the context of her predecessors, while telling the story of the basketball-loving community that rallied behind her in college and beyond.

Howard Megdal’s storytelling incorporates in-depth conversations with Clark; her coach Lisa Bluder; her Iowa teammates, including WNBA star Kate Martin; the top assistant coach at Iowa, Jan Jensen; the Caitlin Clark of the 1970s, Molly Bolin; vital figures in the growth of Iowa basketball like C. Vivian Stringer and Jolette Law; and even Jensen’s grandmother Dorcas Andersen, who scored 89 points in the Iowa state tournament in 1921 and kept journals as she did so, brought to light here for the first time.

From rural auditoriums to the Indiana Fever’s Gainbridge Fieldhouse, this intimate yet kaleidoscopic perspective on the modern game and its newest icon makes this an essential listen for WNBA and college basketball fans.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sports, Basketball, Womens, Biography

256 pages, Hardcover

Published June 17, 2025

Reviews

[Penny Tully · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book for a variety of reasons -

As a former athlete at the University of Iowa (Track, 1980-1985), I love how the author recounts the history of women in sports. Though this story is specific to basketball, the book is a good reminder of how important it is for women to have the opportunity to pursue sports and experience the life lessons sports provide.

As a Caitlin Clark fan I enjoyed the stories the author shared about her journey. It’s extraordinary the impact this young woman has had on women’s basketball and female sports in general.

A must read!

[John Schorg · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first in what will certainly be a cottage industry of books about the basketball star. This one is half about Caitlin Clark and half about women's basketball in her home state of Iowa. The book is fine as far as it goes, but I would say that a better accounting of her career was provided by Wright Thompson for ESPN.

[Joanne Lannin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not being able to watch Caitlin Clark in action for much of this WNBA season is a blow to the many new fans who became fans when she entered the league a season ago. Luckily a new book about Clark, published this summer, has filled the void to some extent. Becoming Caitlin Clark:The Unknown Origin Story of a Basketball Superstar, was published in June by Triumph Books. Howard Megdal, who also has a podcast and a website devoted to women’s basketball, takes an approach that I found interesting. Details of Clark’s career only take up about half of the book. The rest is devoted to other figures in Iowa girls basketball history. His thesis is that Clark might not have become the darling of Iowa basketball and the superstar she is now had it not been for the Iowans who paved the way for her.
Megdal’s approach seems reasonable enough to me. I devoted a chapter to Iowa basketball in Finding A Way to Play: The Pioneering Spirit of Women in Basketball. Some of the women I interviewed, such as Molly Bolin, were statewide sensations, thanks to their exploits in the annual 6-on-6 tournament. Bolin went on to star in the forerunner to the WNBA, the Women’s Professional Basketball League of the late 1970s. Other lesser known women I talked to waxed nostalgic about the crowds that would form caravans, emptying out small towns, to follow their teams to the state tournament in Des Moines. Iowa held on to the 6-on-6 game 20 years longer than the rest of the country because this version of basketball was so popular. The switch was controversial but obviously necessary if Iowa girls were going to have a level field on which to compete for college scholarships. Playing 5 on 5, just like the boys, didn’t stop Iowans from loving girls basketball. They followed their college teams, such as the University of Iowa Hawks, as rabidly as they followed the high school games in their home towns. According to Megdal, this history laid the foundation for Clark’s rise to fame.
Even if you aren’t fully convinced of his logic, there’s still a lot to like about his book. As in his previous book Rare Gems, which was devoted to women’s basketball in Minnesota, you meet some really interesting people. Among those he spends time with are Clark’s coach at Iowa, Lisa Bluder, who wrote the foreward to the book; Clark’s Iowa teammate, Kate Martin, who now plays for the Golden State Valkeryies; the current Iowa coach, Jan Jensen, who had quite the career herself in the 1970s (and was a hoot on a recent episode of Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me); and Molly Bolin. Parts of chapters are also devoted to former University of Iowa coaches C. Vivian Stringer and Jolette Law. The most interesting back story was probably that of Jensen's grandmother Dorcas Andersen, who scored 89 points in the Iowa state tournament in 1921 and whose exploits were detailed in the journal she kept throughout her high school years.
Megdal, a veteran reporter covered MLB, the NFL, and MLS before turning his attention exclusively to women’s basketball. He’s created two websites (or newsrooms as he calls them) that are devoted to women’s basketball, so he had lots of Caitlin Clark material to call upon before he even conceived of this book. To be honest, I think the book dragged a little here and there. Once in a while I got a little bogged down in details that weren’t moving the story along. Even good reporters need to be good editors. For the most part though, Becoming Caitlin Clark is a good read. If you need a Caitlin Clark fix, this book will certainly help.

[Anna Swafford · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars
Like so many people, I became enraptured by Caitlin Clark in her college days during her insane March Maddness shows. And through CC, I fell into the WNBA, so of course, I needed to see what the books are already saying about her.
This one stays true to its name: it's all about how Caitlin Clark became Caitlin Clark. By alternating chapters about the history of women's basketball in Iowa and CC's career and impact, you start to really understand how this has all been a century in the making. Before reading this, I had zero clue about how much Iowa truly has impacted the women's game, and the genuine love that Iowa has had for women's basketball. So many of the stories that Howard shares in this are actually so insane, I can't believe I hadn't heard them before (actually yes I can, I historically have not cared about sports before 18 months ago).
My biggest issue with it was that it felt like the editing and writing process were rushed. There were several points in which I had to read a sentence 3+ times to understand what was happening within the sentence. It just continually felt like Howard changed his mind halfway through writing a sentence on how he wanted to craft the sentence, which made for confusingly used em dashes, miss-used semi-colons and paragraph structures that lost their train of thoughts. And maybe that's too nit-picky, but it drove me a little nuts, because I could see the bones of a well-thought out sentence.

[Randall Russell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book to be incredibly disappointing! The author doesn't deliver on either the title or the subtitle - he provides little to no insight into what formed Caitlin CLark into the superstar that she is, and he completely skips over her formative years - middle and high school, and only gives slightly more attention to her college years. The author spent the 1st 30 pages (out of 266) on Iowa women's basketball ancient history (1900-1950), then skips around Caitlin's career and tries to tie her success back to that history. Having followed women's basketball since 2008 and attended over 200 games in person, I get it, that a lot of legends, coaching legends, and daughters of legends got their start in Iowa, but this book (at least according to the title) is supposed to be about Caitlin Clark, NOT a history of Iowa women's basketball. I would have expected details about Caitlin's routines growing up, what inspired her, when did she first think about college basketball, the WNBA, how did the support of her parents and coaches smooth her path, physically how does she train/practice, recover, and in the whole book, there's nothing about any of that!

[Michele Pfrogner · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. I had been skipping around, trying to find specific information about Clark, and not just the details of Iowa's women's basketball history. When I landed on page 114, and read a totally unrelated flagrant reference to an election "waged between one of the most open racists in recent American life and a woman of color," I was done. A lot of ideas were like that from what I did read ... thrown in here and there, just to reflect the author's own bias. His reference to Clark's snub on the Olympic team, as another example, came out of nowhere. Also, as a retired English teacher, I had to read some sentences twice because the syntax did not construct a cohesive thought.
Like some other reviewers stated, this was a book thrown together, putting Clark on the cover to make some easy bucks from her status. I am grateful that I borrowed the book from the library, rather than purchasing it.

[Mitchell Northam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most important piece of journalism written about Caitlin Clark’s meteoric rise so far because it properly contextualizes everything that has made her career possible. Clark wasn’t a *big boom* for women’s basketball, but the player who came along at the perfect time — when institutions like the NCAA, ESPN and the WNBA all got on the same page to create an environment in which she could thrive in. Moreover, Clark couldn’t have become what has she has had she been born in any state and gone to any school — it had to be Iowa. Clark stands on the shoulders of people like Molly Bollin, C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen and her grandmother. With illuminating interviews and boatloads of detail and context, Howard Megdal gives us the how and the why behind Caitlin Clark.

[Deborah Sparrow · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to this book to be so much better. It seems that it was thrown together and is an inconsistent read. Some sentences are clunky and almost indecipherable. Others are well done. The writing and editing is sloppy in places. The research on the history of women’s basketball in Iowa is interesting. Some of the insight on the six player game, Clark, and the rise of the program at Iowa is interesting. Otherwise, can’t recommend this, especially at full price.

[Alicia Bandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good! Thought I was just going to be reading a book about CC, not knowing how much I would learn about the early history of women’s basketball and about the Iowa basketball culture. Also reading from the perspective of a journalist really brought validity to the story and you could feel is passion for the people he had covered over the years.

[Thomas Doscher · Rating 2 out of 5]

It really is a book about the development of women's basketball. Caitlyn is mentioned, but most of it is historical. I think the author put Caitlyn's name in the title only so he could sell copies.
I felt cheated. Also, he repeats the lies about Fever fans being racist, as if it were fact, when it is all manufactured by jealous playets and coaches.

[Carolyn Deboer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reinforces what Caitlin herself says — she stands on the shoulders of all those before her. This book examines in brief, the last 100 years of woman’s basketball. Also examines the history of basketball at Iowa culminating with Lisa Bluder. Most other modern era info is already readily available if you’re already a fan.

[Eliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting account of the history of women’s basketball, particularly in Iowa, that taught me many things I didn’t know about the history of pre-title 9 women’s basketball and the artificial limits imposed on women and girls, from players to coaches. I was perhaps most shocked to learn that, at one point, at least in Iowa, women were not allowed to coach if they got married. This book is less about Caitlin herself than the title and cover would lead you to believe, but I still enjoyed it. However, I don’t know if it was the writing style or poor editing, but it was sometimes hard to follow and seemed almost like I wasn’t reading the final draft.

[Layne Sheetz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some fully botched names and other quirky editing misses but a really unique read on the history of women’s basketball and Caitlin Clark.

[IPG Independent Publishers Group · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really interesting take - biography meets history of the sport. I enjoyed Megdal's voice and the tone and pace of the work.

[Chris Butts · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the history of women’s basketball in Iowa! A very enjoyable book.

[Melody Riggs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thought it would be more about her and growing up becoming who she is. Very little on that. More focused on Iowa Women’s basketball history.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprehensive history of Iowa girls' and women's high school and college basketball featuring Caitlin Clark.

[Jasmine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liked the color inserts but the book felt more like a women’s basketball history lesson than about Clark herself. 1 chapter and put down

[Anna]

Read by J & A.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was more about the history of basketball in Iowa than it was about Caitlyn Clark, which I wish I knew before reading it