snowy Monday night in January, Caitlin Clark walked into a dimly lit restaurant in Iowa City and looked around the room for her parents.
They smiled from a back table and waved her over. It was her 22nd birthday. Three teammates and the head Iowa Hawkeyes manager were with her, and soon everyone settled in and stories started to fly — senior year energy, still in college and nostalgic for it, too.
In summer 2023, as a reward for their Final Four season, the Iowa coaches arranged a boondoggle of an international preseason run through Italy and Croatia, grown-ass women, pockets thick with NIL money to burn.
They saw places they’d never seen, spoke strange languages and walked narrow cobblestone streets. One of the best nights was when we got bottles of wine and just sat on the rooftop of the hotel, Caitlin said.
On the last free day of the trip, they proposed a vitally important mission to head manager Will McIntire, who now sat at the birthday table next to me.
They needed a yacht.
Like a real one, the kind of boat where Pat Riley and Jay-Z might be drinking mojitos on a summer Sunday.
So McIntire found himself with the hotel concierge looking at photographs of boats. He asked Caitlin about the price of one that looked perfect.
