Women’s basketball without Caitlin Clark is unimaginable. Who else would be breaking records left and right and revolutionizing a game that had it a long time coming? And to think, she might have almost become a soccer player! A multi-sport athlete throughout her school years, the reigning WNBA Rookie of the Year recently revealed why she gave up on the other ball sport for the hard court.

Scheduled to play at The ANNIKA with Annika Sorenstam herself and Nelly Korda tomorrow, the Des Moines native is gearing up for yet another sport in the W offseason. But before taking to the golf greens, she is speaking at the Women’s Leadership Summit with the golf legend herself.

And to the host, Clark said about her various sporting interests in high school, “I grew up playing everything and I was super competitive, so my parents kind of just tossed me out there and wanted me to get my energy out whether it was soccer, softball, golf, track, I really did it all.”

The Fever No. 22 has never hidden how her first preference was always soccer. And we have seen how stellar she was at it as well. Sharing how high school made it clear that basketball would be what she would ultimately pursue, Clark also revealed, “In high school, I played soccer and I was on varsity and I loved it. But my teammates would get mad because I would go and practice and workout and do basketball after school right before we had our soccer games and they couldn’t believe that I was doing that.”

And that ended in tragedy! “So I eventually had to give up soccer even though I loved it.” Her scores and stat line from her high school days prove that she was excellent at it too. Famously the only freshman to make it to the First-Team All-State. Her numbers? 26 goals in just six games.

The ‘Iowa sensation’ played in so few games because she was busy winning a gold medal in the FIBA Under-16 Americas Championship in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her former coach and even her dad believe that had Clark stayed in soccer, she would have made an equal impact as she has in basketball. Her ball-passing ability is already insane and she might have picked that up from soccer.

Clark is said to have a full-court vision, knowing where every player is at all times, and that includes the opposite team. Given how wide a soccer field is, No. 22 developed that skill on the pitch and uses it to her advantage on a full basketball court, passing to a teammate on the other end of the court.

While Dowling Catholic High School only saw Clark play soccer for two years, by junior year she had decided basketball was the one for her.

How Caitlin Clark decided basketball would be her one true sport

Apart from golf and soccer, we have also seen Caitlin Clark play some baseball and she is also a football fan. But in high school, basketball was always the one she paid special attention to. “When I got into high school, I kinda knew basketball was my future and I loved it and I wanted to practice,” Clark said at the LPGA event. It was not just her need to win that fueled her passion for hoops.

“I wanted to get better at it, I wanted to spend time working on my game and that’s probably what set that apart from all the other sports I played.” When it came to soccer, Clark also revealed how “It was for fun – I was really competitive about it but I didn’t take extra time out of my day and go and work on my game and be better.”

But she did for basketball. “So I think that’s what kind of helped me figure out the path I wanted to take.” Maybe she would have played with Alex Morgan and Co. someday and made a name for herself on the pitch. But maybe basketball is where Caitlin Clark was always meant to belong!