Sports media latched tightly onto the debate around Caitlin Clark and the U.S. women’s national basketball team throughout the spring as she broke records in the NCAA and made the WNBA All-Star team as a rookie. But America’s top Olympics executive doesn’t see Clark’s exclusion from Team USA as a snub at all.
In an interview with Bloomberg this week, U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland explained why she gives USA Basketball the benefit of the doubt in its selection process. She said she expects this year’s squad to win the gold, even without Clark.
“I think what you have to recognize is that the selection process for an Olympic of Paralympic games is a multiyear process,” Hirshland said on the Bloomberg Business of Sports podcast. “USA Basketball in this instance, the governing body for the sport of basketball here in the U.S., has been underway in a process that’s very clearly defined and set out, and they bring a group of … women together over the course of many years.”
Hirshland described how representing the country in past events like the FIBA World Cup matters to the governing bodies of sports like USA Basketball.
“That team of people have to actually qualify for the Games. It isn’t a given that the U.S. has qualified for the Games,” Hirshland said. “And that happens over the course of quite a bit of time.”
Hirshland called USA Basketball’s selection of the 12 women to play in the Olympics “disciplined” and why the USOPC has confidence that the body got it right “yet again.”
“When you look at the whole thing in totality, I would say USA Basketball has had a very disciplined process with people who know more about the sport of women’s basketball than anyone else in the world. And I trust that they know exactly what they’re doing,” Hirshland said. “The women have won the gold medal consistently, and our hope is that they’ve gotten it right yet again and we’re going to win another gold.”
Reading between the lines of Hirshland’s comments, she is going by the book but also casting aside the idea that the team needs Clark for attention or that Team USA and the USOPC more broadly would benefit from Clark being in Paris. To someone like Hirshland who oversees the never-ending cycle these athletes participate in, Clark jumping ahead because she is popular would not have made sense.
Popularity is, after all, most advocates’ main argument for Clark playing in this year’s Olympics. College players and rookies have participated in the past with players like Diana Taurasi, Sylvia Fowles, Candace Parker and Breanna Stewart, but each had even more college success than Clark and came along in an era with arguably less overall talent than Team USA and the WNBA boast today.
It would be surprising to hear Hirshland step too far out of bounds in any direction on this debate. But her reference to the women’s team’s incredible dominance is enough to get her message.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.