After the Indiana Fever sustained a disappointing 24-20 season in 2025, star guard Caitlin Clark is giving fans a much-needed — and promising — health update.
“I’m a person that doesn’t want to sit out a single rep, like I want to be in there every single time,” Clark, 24, told reporters on Monday, April 20, adding that she will be back to “100 percent” with no playing restrictions when the 2026 season kicks off in a couple of weeks.
“I love competing and I love playing. None of that has changed,” she added. “But I think just being a little bit smarter with my body and understanding what that takes…whether that’s recovery, whether that’s pre-court treatment, whatever it is.”
Clark played only 13 games in her second professional season as quad, groin and ankle injuries kept her on the sidelines. While the star doesn’t want to miss a rep, her head coach, Stephanie White, brought her starting buard back down to Earth, explaining to reporters that it is more important to keep her healthy in the long run.
“She doesn’t have to be out there every rep, just being mindful,” White, 48, told The IX’s Tony East on Monday. “Every year that she gets older, she understands the cadence is a little bit different.”
White added that her comments went not only for Clark, but for Fever franchise mainstays Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell as well.
“With her, with Kelsey, with AB, with all of them, just be mindful of getting them in and out,” she said. “And we need to get other people integrated anyway so I think it’ll give us a good opportunity to do that.”
Clark hasn’t played a WNBA game since July 15, but maintained hope that she could return for the season’s stretch run in the weeks that followed her latest injury. On September 4, she finally announced that her season was over.
“I had hoped to share a better update, but I will not be returning to play this season,” she wrote via Instagram at the time, alongside black-and-white photos of her and her teammates. “I spent hours in the gym every day with the singular goal of getting back out there, disappointed isn’t a big enough word to describe how I am feeling.”
But as crushing as that moment was, Clark was able to reflect on it this week, taking positives from her time on the sidelines.
“That’s a very humbling experience,” she said. “It gives me a good perspective on how to be a great teammate and a great leader.”
The Fever will travel to New York to take on the Liberty in their first preseason game on Saturday, April 25.
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