Caitlin Clark recalls what led her to Iowa over Notre Dame

Caitlin Clark narrowed down her initial college choices early on but she ultimately chose Iowa over Notre Dame in the end.

Of course, you know the rest of the story. But it would’ve been fascinating to see Clark play for the Fighting Irish and she was close to heading to South Bend.

However, a feeling in her gut told her to play for the Hawkeyes, just a bit closer to home.

“I basically narrowed it down pretty early on,” Clark said on New Heights. “When I was going through my college recruitment,  I wanted to be like in the Midwest, just kind of a homebody, family person. Just wanted to stay fairly close to home. So that narrowed a lot of stuff down. And I visited, like Oregon and Texas and a few other places, and I liked them, but it was just like, I knew it was too far. 

“And then I visited Notre Dame a bunch of times, and I was like, I love Notre Dame, and I like, as a kid, like, you want to go to Notre Dame … It’s like the coolest thing, it’s Notre Dame, it has that tradition. They’ve had so many great players go through there in every single sport. But like, I just knew, like, something I could feel it in my gut, I was, like, I’m not supposed to go there, so I picked Iowa.” 

Legendary women’s basketball coach Muffett McGraw actually retired the year before Clark started college basketball, but there were recruiting interactions. Niele Ivey took over beginning in the 2020-21 season.

“Iowa was really good at women’s basketball before I went there too. Like, made a few sweet sixteens, made the Elite Eight,” Clark said. “Our coach had been there for quite a while, but they hadn’t been to the Final Four since like, 1992 so I wanted to go somewhere that was good, but like, maybe had it been like a blue blood per se, in like, quite a few years, and kind of help them get back to that. 

“And then it was obviously my home state too, and two hours from where I grew up, so perfect distance where, like, your parents can’t show up, but also, like, you can go home … It just kind of all worked out perfect. And obviously I made an okay decision, and it worked out pretty well.”