Caitlin Clark has officially surpassed GOAT status for many, achieving something only Serena Williams has done in the athletic world. In 28 years of its existence, no other WNBA player has stood on par with what the 2024 Rookie of the Year is doing right now. Not Candace Parker, arguably one of the best in the sport and one who made the most noise before the Des Moines native, and not A’ja Wilson, nor Diana Taurasi, nor Sheryl Swoopes, or any other famous name you can think of.

Forbes magazine just named Clark to the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women in 2024. Not only is she the first basketball player to receive this honor, but the only other athlete to do this in the last 20 years has been the country’s most decorated WTA tennis player. And imagine, Williams has 23 Grand Slams to her name to justify the honor. Clark just finished her rookie season and has not even won a championship yet.

It eluded her in her college days but might be able to guide the Indiana Fever to one. Nevertheless, the TIME Magazine Athlete of the Year might be on the way to being as mononymous as Serena! Considering her achievements in her years of playing basketball and the last few years of fame, it’s not out of reach either.

“Caitlin Clark became the lightning rod of this moment in time,” says Thayer Lavielle, the executive director of Wasserman’s sports division, The Collective. He also estimated the rising value of professional women’s basketball and soccer, going up a combined $1.6 billion in the next three years and doesn’t even include merchandise and media deals.

Forbes also revealed how for the first time in Olympic history, there was a gender parity in the athletes competing. Where Angel City FC became the highest-valued women’s professional sports team, at $250 million, the U.S. women’s soccer team could boast the most-watched championship game in NWSL history.

While this did not involve the Iowa sensation directly, Forbes revealed how it was tangentially an effect of her rising popularity. Even legendary women’s hoops coach Dawn Staley was impressed, believing this attention was long overdue.

Dawn Staley believes the momentum behind women’s sports has led to an “uncontrollable” upsurge

The WNBA has existed since the late 20th century and it’s only in the first quarter of the 21st century that the league has attracted the kind of attention it deserves. Or so says Dawn Staley, who believes that the momentum behind women’s sports in general was a long time coming. All it needed was one big name to catapult it further.

“I think sometimes you need a unifier,” the South Carolina coach said. “I think Caitlin Clark has done a tremendous job at being that person people want to see. She’s brought a different set of eyeballs to our game.”

It doesn’t mean things are suddenly better and men’s and women’s sports are equal. Any of the women athletes fighting for equal pay would tell you that. It’s “a long path to equity,” says Lavielle, who calculated that women’s sports received, on average, 15% of total sports media coverage and 10% of sponsorship dollars. The path to that utopian equality is long indeed, but Caitlin Clark has at least helped set that change in motion.