On February 15th, 2024, University of Iowa basketball star Caitlin Clark broke the NCAA Division 1 all time scoring record of 3,527 points. Kelsey Plum, who used to play for Washington, held the record for 7 years before Clark outscored her this month. Plum now plays in the WNBA for the Las Vegas Aces and has won 2 championships there.
The Hawkeyes were playing Michigan in a home game when the Carver-Hawkeye Arena went into hysterics after Clark pulled up for a three from the logo and sunk it: securing her title. Clark entered this game needing only 8 points to break Plum’s previous record and be held to this honor, so everyone in the gym that day was pretty confident they were going to witness history, especially because Clark averages 32.1 points a game. The excitement occurred very early in the game, so her new feat gave Clark the momentum to also break a personal record and score a career high 49 points that game.
Another record breaking scorer who is less known than Clark is Lynette Woodard. She was an excellent basketball player and played for the University of Kansas from 1987-1981. Woodard scored 3,649 points during her career, which very obviously trumps Kelsey Plum’s previous record mentioned earlier. However, the 80’s was a time period before the NCAA was implemented, so Woodard’s record was not recognized in the discourse surrounding Clark beating the NCAA record. Woodard was a black female athlete during a time when people of color were not well accepted in our society, much less welcomed in the sports world. Many people speculate that the status of society at that time is related to her erasure in women’s collegiate basketball history. Woodard continued on to play for Team USA as well as the Harlem Globetrotters. This was because there was no professional league for women’s basketball in the U.S. yet. The WNBA was created when she was 38 years old, but that did not stop her from joining and being one of the oldest players in the league. Woodard won a gold medal at the Olympics in 1984 for Team USA. She also was a coach for many years at Winthrop University. This hall of famer has been absent from the headlines until very recently.
With the controversy of if Clark actually beat the record or not, the Iowa native took this newly known record head on. In Iowa’s game against University of Minnesota on February 28th, 2024, Clark scored 33 points which put her stat line at 3,650 points, passing Woodard’s unrecognized record. Clark acknowledged that this was the record to beat and gave her respects towards the “GOAT”: Woodard. Lisa Bluder, Iowa’s head coach paid honor to Woodard and brought notice that players like Woodard were playing with a larger ball and no three-point line, making this immense amount of career points even more impressive. Woodard has commented on this situation and has simply said that their history should be as important as others because it is deserved and all it takes is respect.
Even with people like Clark breaking records left and right despite her gender, women’s history is still being covered and ignored. We are making progress as a society but I think we all know there is so much more room to grow.