Caitlin Clark Shares Painful Details Before Indiana Fever Return
Caitlin Clark is back for the Indiana Fever after missing five straight games, including their WNBA Commissioner's Cup championship, with a left groin injury.
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Before Clark's return against the Golden State Valkyries on Wednesday, she opened up about exactly how difficult it was to miss games for just the second time in her career — the first being her quad injury earlier this season.
"It's honestly been hard, I'm not going to lie to you," Clark told reporters before the early tip-off against the Valkyries at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Wednesday. "It's difficult going to prepare for games but knowing you're not going to be playing in them."
Despite her long list of accomplishments in her young career, Clark admitted that she had to stop the doubts from creeping in during her rehab.
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark.© Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images
"Just reminding myself of my abilities and what I've been able to do in this league even though I've been sitting out," Clark revealed.
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Since being taken with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft, the former Iowa Hawkeyes standout has left no doubt in fans' minds about what she can do in the league.
Averaging 18.2 points, 5.0 rebounds and 8.9 assists in her nine games played this season, Clark made her second straight WNBA All-Star Game and broke the record for most fan votes in the process.
"It's really hard to stop and go, especially when you're not feeling your best," she added. "I'm trying to get my body as healthy as I can be and remain confident in myself and then do everything I can once I step back out on the court to help us win."
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She finally gets her chance to contribute to a win against a Valkyries team that includes her teammate from Iowa, Kate Martin, and a member of her WNBA All-Star team for this year, Kayla Thornton.
Golden State beat Indiana 88-77 at home in their first meeting, holding Clark to 11 points on 3-for-14 shooting. On five separate occasions this season, the Fever have beaten a team in their second matchup after losing the first one.
Related: Fever Coach Makes Unprecedented Caitlin Clark Move
Related: Caitlin Clark Forced To Say Something Nice About Valkyries Star
This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 9, 2025, where it first appeared.
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New York Times
36 minutes ago
- New York Times
Ethan Holliday could go No. 1 in the MLB Draft. It would be a pick 4 generations in the making
STILLWATER, Okla. — In the leadup to Sunday's MLB Draft, many pundits will note the Holliday family's deep baseball ties. Matt Holliday played 15 years in the major leagues and made seven All-Star games. His oldest son, Jackson, was drafted first overall three years ago and is now the second baseman for the Baltimore Orioles. Advertisement Now, Ethan Holliday is next in line for a baseball dynasty forged under the endless skies of Oklahoma. He is a gifted 6-foot-4 shortstop with tremendous raw power from the left side. He has a chance to go to the Washington Nationals first overall, and if he doesn't go there, draft experts predict he will go fourth to the Colorado Rockies, the same organization that drafted his father. Some may mention that the line doesn't actually start with Matt, Jackson, and Ethan. Tom Holliday — Matt's father and Jackson's and Ethan's grandfather — was a longtime Division I baseball coach, including a seven-year run as the coach at Oklahoma State. His brother, Dave, is a veteran scout for the Philadelphia Phillies. Matt's brother, Josh, is now the coach at OSU. There are other families out there who have made baseball their business. The Alous, the Boones, the Griffeys. Thirteen pairs of brothers have been drafted as first-round picks. B.J. Upton went second in 2002, and Justin Upton went first in 2005. But if Ethan were to go No. 1, it would be the first time in baseball history two brothers have both been 1-1 picks. Only Peyton and Eli Manning have done that in any major American sport. Try to explain how Jackson and Ethan both grew up to be so good, and everyone in the family shrugs. Part nature, part nurture. 'This was all by accident,' Tom says. No amount of nature, though, guarantees this level of familial athletic success. No amount of nurture ensures that even two physically gifted boys will become elite prospects at this level. That kind of feat takes generations to build. To grasp how all this came to be, you have to rewind more than 100 years. To understand how the Hollidays built a foundation where baseball is intertwined with family, where relentless work is assumed and exceptional achievement is expected, you have to leave Oklahoma's red-dirt plains, take an oblong detour through the desert and head to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. That's where a man named Donald Holliday had a dream. Donald Holliday was born in 1918 in the little town of Somerfield, Pa., a place they later razed and flooded to create the Youghiogheny Dam. He was one of 11 children. Most of his siblings were into fishing or hunting, the mountain life. Donald had an affinity for baseball. As the family legend goes, the famed Yankees scout Paul Krichell discovered Don. He was a talented catcher, and the scout began making arrangements for Don to report to spring training. But this was the outset of World War II. Don was called into the Army. He was in North Africa when a blast went off and ruptured his left eardrum. By the time the war was over, he still had dreams of showing up to Yankees spring training and sliding into pinstripes. But his hearing was permanently damaged. He was older now and could hardly get into a squat. Real life beckoned. He never stopped following the Yankees. Advertisement Donald became a truck driver in Uniontown, 55 miles outside Pittsburgh. He worked from 4 a.m. until sundown. For his youngest boys Tom and Dave, baseball was a way to capture his attention. 'A way to connect with him,' Dave said. The boys stood on the porch under Pennsylvania stars, swinging a bat while Pittsburgh Pirates games sounded over the radio. Sometimes Donald sat in the kitchen, radio to his right ear, barely able to decipher the crackling signal of the Yankees game. On the rare occasions Donald got off early on a Friday, he would bound through the door, smile on his face, pep in his voice. 'Get in the car,' he'd say, 'We're going to New York.' They made the pilgrimage to old Yankee Stadium, stayed for the games Saturday and Sunday, then drove back to Pennsylvania. 'He was so into baseball,' Tom said all these years later. 'We had to explore it.' In 1971, a letter from the desert helped Tom set a new trajectory. Don sat across the kitchen table, smoke billowing from a cigarette in his hand, while his son shuffled through a stack of mail. Notre Dame, Ohio State, Michigan State, Pitt and more. Tom was a terrific high school quarterback on a losing team with a shoddy offensive line. He was also an all-region baseball player. At that table, Tom weighed his options. He wanted to play baseball, but he was from a cold-weather state, and only one place wanted him on a baseball-only offer. That was Yavapai College, a small school in the middle of Arizona with a swashbuckling coach named Gary Ward. Sometimes Tom saw the letters, assumed they were advertisements for a strange school whose name he couldn't pronounce. Something in Donald Holliday's gut told him Tom should take those letters more seriously. 'That guy writes you all the time,' he said. 'Maybe give that guy a chance.' 'He didn't say much,' Tom says of his father. 'But when he did, you listened.' It's a Thursday morning in Jenks, Okla., south of Tulsa, at the 6A state baseball tournament. Matt Holliday leans forward and grabs onto a black chain-link fence. Cowbells ring from the stands, and Stillwater High players run onto the field. None of them move with quite the same grace as Ethan Holliday. He's tall and sleek, with long hair, all-American looks and one hell of a pedigree. Advertisement 'I want my kids to pursue their passion,' Matt says. 'The fact that it matches up with something I'm passionate about, it makes it all the better. If they had picked music or something like that, I would be able to stand by and clap but not necessarily able to help.' Tom, Josh and all of Matt's family live within a 10-mile radius in Stillwater, the kind of college town where people come back and measure time against the institutions that remain. The Hollidays are one of those institutions. Ethan hits left-handed and grades out with easy plus power. He's bigger and a more aggressive swinger than his older brother. Their games differ, and so do their personalities. Jackson, slowly finding his groove in his second season with the Orioles, is level-headed and serious, a lot like Matt. Everyone says Ethan is more emotional, maybe like his mother, Leslee. Maybe more like Tom. 'A little bit more life of the party, wears his emotions a little bit more on his sleeve,' Matt says. 'I think that's part of having kids. All your kids are different.' Leslee is the great-niece of Bob Fenimore, an All-American football player at Oklahoma State who finished third in the 1945 Heisman Trophy race. It is not only the Holliday genes that make Ethan and Jackson preternaturally gifted. But the baseball aptitude? That's a distinctly Holliday trait. Before the 2022 season, Matt accepted the job to become the St. Louis Cardinals' bench coach. He resigned from the post before the season started, deciding he needed to spend more time with his family. MLB players still trek to Oklahoma to hit with Matt, who — if he wants it — could still have a future as an MLB coach or manager. 'If you want to feel bad about where you are as a hitter, go hit with the Holliday family,' said 14-year major leaguer Matt Carpenter, who once rebuilt his swing in Stillwater. Advertisement The Stillwater High Pioneers wear blue and yellow, but in the stands, multiple kids wear Orioles jerseys with Jackson's No. 7 — the same number Matt wore for much of his career and the same number Ethan wears now — on the back. Three years ago, Jackson and Ethan played on the Stillwater High team, just like Josh and Matt did way back when. Now Brady Holliday, Josh's son and Ethan's cousin, hits leadoff and plays second base as a sophomore. 'I graduate next week, and it's hard to believe,' Ethan said after his final high-school game. 'I'm proud of my time in Stillwater, and I'm looking forward to what's next. But Stillwater is my home. It's home forever. Nothing can take that away.' Sitting at a breakfast joint in Stillwater, Tom twists his head left, then right. The boy who once yearned for his father's attention is now the patriarch of a baseball dynasty. Those letters from Ward led to Tom playing two seasons as a catcher at Yavapai College. He finished his college career at Miami, then played one professional season in the Pirates system. There was a job at Miami, then a year at Arizona State. Ward won junior college national titles in '75 and '77, and after that 1977 season, he practically had his pick of DI jobs. Wherever he went, Ward wanted Holliday to be his top assistant. Tom favored UCLA or Cal. But Ward was from a tiny Oklahoma railroad town called Ramona, and he liked the school in Stillwater. 'Oklahoma State?' Tom said. 'Where the hell is that?' With a wife and baby in the car, Tom arrived in Stillwater, 15 miles that feels like an eternity off Interstate 35, and went straight to the baseball field off Knoblock Street. It was called University Park back then, and it was a travesty. Grass grew in the baselines. Weeds, six feet high, covered the infield. There was a massive pile of dirt between second and third. Advertisement Tom found a pay phone. 'Well,' Ward told him, 'get it ready for practice. We got a lot of work to do.' They sifted the dirt, pulled the weeds, bled and sweat under a sweltering summer sun. That first year, they won 40 games. Over the next 19 seasons, Oklahoma State went to the College World Series 11 times. Pete Incaviglia pinged home runs that scraped the sky. Robin Ventura stacked hits like the bricks they used to build the new Allie P. Reynolds Stadium. All the while, two small boys soaked it all in. Josh and Matt Holliday grew up living and breathing Oklahoma State baseball. They chased foul balls, mimicked players' stances, stole cookies out of Ward's desk. OSU players were their heroes. They played on a big stage. Their world felt small. 'There was never a time that baseball wasn't anything other than a passion that we learned to work at and respect,' Josh said. '(Dad) taught us to do that. He prepared us. He pushed us. He toughened us up and made us competitors. He never sugarcoated anything but he made us believe anything was possible.' Josh grew into a quarterback, star baseball player and valedictorian at Stillwater High. Matt went on to become a star quarterback, too. Unlike his father and brother, he was tall and sculpted, taking more after Kathy's side of the family. They all still laugh about the time Matt came home with a C on his report card. Josh, who once tossed his younger brother's Nintendo over the back fence thinking it would help keep him focused, was yelling. 'C is for average. You're not average.' The two nearly came to blows, one of the only times they ever fought. That night, Matt came to his parents' bedroom said, 'I won't get any more C's.' In a recruiting class that featured Michael Vick and Carson Palmer, some services considered Matt the best quarterback recruit in the country. He had offers from all over but committed to play two sports at Oklahoma State. Advertisement When the first round of the MLB draft came, teams shied away, fearing he wouldn't sign. Dave Holliday, Tom's brother, worked for the Rockies back then. Long story short: Colorado drafted Matt in the seventh round. He received an $840,000 signing bonus and a contract clause that would allow him to return to football after three years. Matt chose baseball and never looked back. Tom was Ward's pitching coach and ace recruiter for 19 seasons, until one day in 1996, Ward told his old protege his back hurt and he had seen enough. Tom was soon named head coach, tasked with taming the monster they built. Josh played for his dad at Oklahoma State, then spent two years in the Blue Jays system. More than the grinding existence of a fringe prospect, he wanted the life he watched every day growing up. Teaching, coaching, helping. He came back and worked for Tom as an assistant. While Matt rose up the pro ranks, they lived this baseball life together. Until 2003, when — another long story short — school politics got messy, and Tom Holliday's contract was not renewed. The Cowboys had missed the postseason in three of his final four years. Josh has called it one of the hardest times of his life, the family thrust out of the place where they had invested so much. 'In many ways, looking back, it was a blessing,' Josh said. 'But it didn't feel like one. It felt like something you loved didn't love you back anymore.' Tom went on to be Augie Garrido's pitching coach at Texas. Josh went out on his own coaching odyssey, including stops at Georgia Tech, Arizona State and Vanderbilt. Matt, meanwhile, blossomed into an All-Star outfielder, revered both for his hitting prowess and his savvy leadership. He traveled the big-league circuit with his family. A young Jackson grew up hitting rolled-up straw wrappers with butter knives at the dinner table. He smacked sock balls over the fish tank in Tom and Kathy's living room. He was a sideshow in major-league clubhouses, where Matt's teammates marveled at his innate ability to mimic any swing. Then, one day in 2012, another twist of fate. Tom Holliday got a call from Mike Holder, the AD at Oklahoma State. Holder told Tom he was going to hire a new baseball coach. He wanted Josh, but only with Tom's blessing. Tom gave his approval. Josh brought back the interlocking O and S on the team's caps and restored the team's old-school jerseys. He once said his only hesitation was that he might care about the place too much. Advertisement 'This is my major leagues,' he said. A few years later, after Tom was done coaching at Auburn, he and Kathy loaded the trucks and moved back to Stillwater. 'I was worried about being around,' Tom said. 'But we said, 'To hell with it. We're gonna go, because we're gonna be together.'' At the end of Matt's playing career — which, toward the end, took him to Donald Holliday's beloved Yankees — he, too, moved his family from their home by the ocean in Jupiter, Fla. 'We're coming to Stillwater,' he told his father. 'To visit?' Tom asked. 'No,' Matt said. 'To stay.' Baseball molded this family, scattered them across the country, then brought them all back together. 'In the end,' Josh said, 'you only go out and work so you can come back home and be with your people.' Tom Holliday watches his grandsons less through a sentimental eye and more with the hardened focus of an old coach. But his eyes still get misty when he thinks of his father. What might Donald Holliday think of all this? That one elicits a laugh. 'Probably,' Tom said, 'he would light a cigarette, sit there and say, 'You know, we need to get Jackson traded to the Yankees. Or, don't let Ethan go to anybody but the Yankees.'' Here in Stillwater, the next generation took to the game because it was interlaced with life. Tom threw batting practice to Jackson, took Ethan down in the garage to vent and hit soft toss after a bad day at school. As they grew older, Jackson, Ethan and cousin Brady gathered each morning to take grounders and hit BP. 'Everyone in our family lives in Oklahoma, so being able to go back and go out to their land, be around all my cousins and uncles, it was pretty cool,' Jackson said. Out at Matt Holliday's property, there's a Wiffle Ball field and five No. 7s stuck on orange walls. Matt spent a season on Josh's staff at Oklahoma State. Tom spent summers coaching dozens of draft picks on Cape Cod. Uncle Dave lives about an hour away in Bixby. To this day, Matt, Ethan and Jackson hit and work out at OSU. The kids grew up on home-run derbies and competitions in the cage. Advertisement Matt has another son, Reed, who is not yet in high school. Josh has a daughter, Olivia. Matt's daughter, Gracyn, watches every game, talks baseball on the ride home like the rest of them. 'Man,' Tom says, laughing. 'We really ruined these kids.' Five hours after Ethan Holliday's last high school baseball game, he stood on the concourse at the shining O'Brate Stadium with his father and a handful of teammates, watching Oklahoma State play. Tom was up in the booth broadcasting for ESPN+. 'They have my back no matter what,' Ethan said of his family. 'If I didn't have my circle, I'd be out of whack. They're my people, and I'm really thankful.' Donald Holliday died in 2001 and never met his great-grandchildren. But Josh has memories of visits to the house in Pennsylvania, playing Wiffle Ball and listening to the Pirates on the radio. In this odd little town where everything is painted orange, Tom Holliday's boys recreated their childhood. And maybe without knowing it, they built the kind of life Donald Holliday wanted. (Top photo of Matt, Ethan and Jackson: Daniel Shirey / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
USA Today
37 minutes ago
- USA Today
Rival Big Ten football coach inks long-term contract extension
The boat will continue to row up north in Minnesota. PJ Fleck, the head coach of the Minnesota Golden Gophers, has signed a contract extension that will keep him locked up long-term. The border rival of the Iowa Hawkeyes, the Golden Gophers, extended PJ Fleck through 2030 with his new deal that was just recently signed. The extension was locked into place in early July by the Board of Regents. Fleck has been at just two FBS programs during his time as a head coach since 2013. He spent 2013-2016 with the Western Michigan Broncos, where he parlayed a 13-1 season and a Cotton Bowl trip into a head coaching job at Minnesota. He was 30-22 at Western Michigan. He joined Minnesota in 2017 and owns a career record of 56-39 with a Big Ten record of 33-36. The Gophers have ended the year with a winning record in five of Fleck's eight seasons. Iowa meets Minnesota annually for the Floyd of Rosedale trophy, a big, bronze pig that resides with the winner each year. Since taking over at Minnesota, Iowa has had Fleck's number. PJ Fleck owns just a 1-7 record against the Hawkeyes, with his only win coming in the extremely controversial ruling of Cooper DeJean's punt return fiasco. Contact/Follow us @HawkeyesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Iowa news, notes and opinions. Follow Riley on X: @rileydonald7
Fox News
40 minutes ago
- Fox News
Padres' Jason Adam reveals how he learned he was selected for All-Star Game
MLB reliever Jason Adam earned the first All-Star nod of his career as he put together a dominant first half of the season coming out of the bullpen for the San Diego Padres. Adam was at church with his wife when he received the call from Padres manager Mike Shildt about the All-Star selection. However, immediately, Adam said, his wife thought he was going to be traded. "I feel my phone vibrate, and I'm like, 'Oh, it's Shildty,' and I show my wife, and she immediately goes, 'Oh my gosh, no way, we're traded,'' he told People magazine on Wednesday. He said he stepped out to take the call and learned the good news. He returned to the service and told his wife, Kelsey, who he said burst into tears. "It caused a small scene in church," he said. "But she was crying, so excited." Adam said he called his parents next to tell them and credited them with helping him get to where he presently is in his career. The trade fear was very much warranted. San Diego is Adam's fifth team in eight MLB seasons. He started with the Kansas City Royals before he moved to the Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago Cubs, Tampa Bay Rays and finally the Padres. San Diego acquired him in 2024 and really began to make an impact then. This season, Adam has a 1.58 ERA in 45 games with 52 strikeouts. He had a career-high 81 strikeouts between the Rays and Padres last season, appearing in 74 games. San Diego is 49-43 this season. Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado and Robert Suarez will represent the Padres at the All-Star Game as well. Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
