Clark: Still getting over ‘mental hurdle of trusting my body’

LOS ANGELES — Ten months after struggling season-ending accidents, Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark continues to be overcoming the psychological side of making a comeback.

“I think the hardest part of injury is something I’m still really battling and almost struggling with is just the mental hump of getting over everything,” Clark mentioned Wednesday earlier than the Fever’s 87-78 win over the Los Angeles Sparks.

“I understand my body too well to a point now,” she mentioned, “and it’s something I wasn’t in touch enough with before my injuries. And now I understand it very well. You just become hypercautious about certain things.”

Before Wednesday, Clark had performed only one WNBA recreation since her season was shut down in July. That was Indiana’s season-opening loss to the Dallas Wings on Saturday, throughout which Clark went to the tunnel twice to get her again labored on and “adjusted.”

After the sport, Clark mentioned that his again “gets out of line pretty quickly” and that his journeys off the bench had been to “get my back put back in place a little bit.”

She returned and performed eight extra minutes.

“That moment where my back tightened up, I think I almost got confidence from that because I came back in and I played eight more minutes, so I felt great,” Clark mentioned Wednesday. “It’s something I can take confidence from. But it’s going to take me a little bit to really get over the mental hurdle of trusting my body.”

Indiana coach Stephanie White mentioned it is not unusual for younger gamers to not know the right mechanics of their our bodies, and generally they do not get uncovered till they endure a unique harm. White mentioned it was going to be an ongoing factor for Clark, in addition to the opposite gamers on the Fever’s roster.

At shootaround Wednesday morning, White mentioned she is at all times attempting to determine find out how to handle Clark’s workload and the staff’s.

“In a perfect world, you have a pretty consistent rotation and nobody’s playing heavy, heavy minutes. So we’ll be really strategic with everybody early in the season,” White mentioned. “We were, unfortunately, in a situation where people had to play heavy minutes last year because of our injuries. And we’d like to be better about managing those through the course of the regular season.”

Clark, who was not on a minute restriction towards the Sparks, completed with a team-high 24 factors, 4 rebounds and 9 assists in 31 minutes.

“I ran 4.6 miles in that game on Saturday, so it’s a lot of stress on somebody’s body and just the face and the physicality of it too,” Clark mentioned pregame. “So that’s something I will continue to get used to, but I feel really good.”