Indiana Fever superstar Caitlin Clark missed all but 13 games last season as a result of an injury. Now, she’s back and healthy, but she faces a new struggle that isn’t as much physical as it is mental.
Clark has performed well playing heavy minutes in each of her first two games of the season, averaging 22 points and eight assists per contest. While she’s been on the court and remained dominant, she’s also been careful. During the team’s season-opening loss to the Dallas Wings on Saturday, she went to the tunnel twice to get her back adjusted.
The Fever superstar said after the game that her back “gets out of line pretty quickly” and that her trips off the bench were to “get my back put back in place a little bit.”
She admitted that it’s a bit of a “mental hurdle” to be on the court and trust her body to perform without suffering another injury. When it all works out, however, it leads to even more confidence.
“That moment where my back tightened up, I think I almost got confidence from that because I came back in and I played eight more minutes, so I felt great,” Clark said Wednesday. “It’s something I can take confidence from. But it’s going to take me a little bit to really get over the mental hurdle of trusting my body.”
Clark said that the hardest part of an injury isn’t necessarily just the rehab, it’s the mental struggle of getting back in the fold and worrying about the possibility of another injury. However, there has been one positive to take away from her recovery this time around: she is much more in tune with her body.
“I think the hardest part of injury is something I’m still really battling and almost struggling with is just the mental hump of getting over everything,” Clark said Wednesday via ESPN.
“I understand my body too well to a point now,” she said, “and it’s something I wasn’t in touch enough with before my injuries. And now I understand it very well. You just become hypercautious about certain things.”
Clearly, something is working.
While Clark has struggled with her three-point shot in the first two games of the season, she has been dominant in other ways, ranking No. 6 in the WNBA in scoring with 22 points even while shooting just 18.8% from beyond the arc.
Now, Clark is just doing everything she can to make sure she’s healthy enough to stay on the court throughout the season.
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