Caitlin Clark's Iowa Coach Lisa Bluder Sends Message to 'Silly' Critics of Time Honor
If there has been one person to continually have Caitlin Clark's back during the past few years, it's former Iowa Hawkeyes coach Lisa Bluder.
While Bluder is now retired, she coached Clark throughout her historic four years at Iowa, which included trips to the NCAA National Championship game in 2023 and 2024.
Therefore, nobody has had more of a hand in preparing Clark for her professional basketball success (both on and off the court) than Lisa Bluder.
This is why it was no surprise to hear Bluder's wise sentiment about Clark winning Time Athlete of the Year for 2024 during a recent interview on the USA Today "Sports Seriously" show.
"It's silly to me that anybody's trying to take away from something that's so good in your sport right now," Bluder said when asked about the much-maligned comments of Washington Mystics co-owner Sheila Johnson, who asserted that Clark should not have been placed on Time magazine cover alone when speaking with CNN Sports on December 13.
"I mean, this is a person that's really helped athletics, helped women's sport in a way that nobody has helped women's sports maybe since Billie Jean King," Bluder continued. "So let's get on the bandwagon and help her out, make her life a little bit easier because she is helping all of us.
"And sometimes, we used to tell our [Iowa] team 'Listen, when Caitlin's light shines on her, it shines on all of us'. And I think everybody else needs to embrace that a little bit better."
coach bluder speaks nothing but the truth, “when caitlin’s light shines on her it shines on all of us” pic.twitter.com/bYVZ4Tj9nP
— #22caitlinthegoat (@ccthegoat22) December 17, 2024
Much respect to Bluder for dropping that bar of knowledge.
Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.