Caitlin Clark’s “welcome to the WNBA moment” was quite painful.
The Fever guard, who was selected by Indiana with the No. 1 pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft, recalled rupturing her eardrum when she was hit on a hard screen during a blowout loss to the Liberty on June 2.
“Somebody set a screen on me and I hit my ear just perfect on the girl where my eardrum popped and it ruptured,” Clark, 22, said Thursday on the latest installment of brothers Jason and Travis Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast. “I knew it right away because I’ve done it before [while tubing in a lake]. It hurts so bad … That was my welcome to the W moment.”
Clark added that her ear didn’t bleed when it happened and that her hearing was off for a few weeks.
“It takes months to heal,” Clark said. “So after the season, the doctor had to go back and look and see if it closed, and if it doesn’t close you have to have a minor procedure. But lucky enough it didn’t close, so I was fine.”
Clark suffered the injury during the fourth quarter of the Fever’s 104-68 loss to the Liberty at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
She was looked at on the bench by Fever trainer Todd Champlin before they walked back to the locker room.
Clark came back out to the bench but she did not re-enter the game.
The injury did not cause her to miss time.
In the days following the injury, Clark told reporters she was having trouble hearing but didn’t share details about the injury.
“I don’t wanna explain it, it’d probably be pretty gross, but no, I feel fine. I can’t hear great out of one of my ears,” she said at the time.
Clark — the NCAA’s all-time Division 1 leader in scoring for men and women — previously discussed adjusting to the physicality at the WNBA level.
The Nike athlete went on to be named a WNBA All-Star and the 2024 Rookie of the Year.
