Caitlin Clark Tells Jason & Travis Kelce the Remarkable Reason Her Parents Didn’t Let Her Check the Mail
Caitlin Clark has been able to do a lot of things. Last spring, she became the all-time leading scorer in NCAA basketball history (yes, men and women!) while playing for the Iowa Hawkeyes. She also smashed WNBA records during her first season with the Indiana Fever. Per Sports Illustrated, she scored the most points by a rookie (769), had the most assists by a rookie (337), and set a record for the most turnovers by a rookie (223). And last month, she was named Time‘s 2024 Athlete of the Year. (Talk about a bad a**!)
And yet, when Clark was in middle school, her parents wouldn’t let her do something as simple as check the mail.
During an appearance on Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce’s New Heights podcast, Clark explained to the famed football brothers how her parents kept her grounded. Travis couldn’t help but confirm with Clark that the lore is true — she did indeed get her first college recruiting letter in 7th grade. Seventh. Grade. Sure, she was already playing on a high school team (!!!), but still. The girl is in middle school — probably still in the throes of puberty — and colleges already want to lock her down. That is a big. deal.
“That’s insane,” both Kelce brothers agreed.
“I feel very fortunate,” Clark said, making us think she’d start sharing her gratitude for the letters themselves. But no. She’s grateful for her parents.
“My parents told my older brother, ‘Go get the mail,’ like, ‘we don’t want your sister to see that,'” she said. “They wanted me to be in 7th grade and enjoy middle school and hang out with friends.” Read: They didn’t want her worrying about where she would be going to college when she wasn’t even in high school yet!
“I love that so much,” Jason said. We have to imagine the soon-to-be dad of four was taking notes in case any of his daughters were to receive a recruitment letter at that age.
Clark went on to say her parents did a “really good job” making sure she had a “good circle” around her and that the sole focus was never college recruitment or playing too much basketball. In fact, when she was playing on multiple teams, her mom made sure she never played more than two or three games in a day. And sure, that might sound like a lot on it’s own, but Clark admits she probably wanted to play more.
“They didn’t want me to lose the love of it,” she explained. “You don’t want to get burned out, you still want to be having fun when you’re doing it as a pro, if you’re lucky enough.”
Looking back, the record-breaking guard feels “very fortunate.”
“I haven’t lost that fun of it and that passion for it and always wanting to get better and sometimes that’s why people get burned out because they did it too much as a kid and their parents forced them or whoever forced it onto them too much and that was never really something I had to deal with, so I feel very fortunate.”
Even if she was banned from the mailbox.