Iowa Hawkeyes women's basketball phenom Caitlin Clark has received countless pieces of hardware during her playing days, especially over the past two years as she has taken college basketball by storm. But after surpassing LSU legend Pete Maravich on Sunday for the most points in NCAA Division I men's or women's basketball history, the sharpshooting guard received something truly rare.
After Iowa's 93-83 victory over Ohio State, Clark received a custom vest made by Kristin Juszczyk, whose NFL-inspired designs went viral toward the end of the football season. Juszczyk, who is married to San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk, created pieces handcrafted by Taylor Swift, Simone Biles and Taylor Lautner. Widespread enthusiasm for her work led to a licensing deal with the NFL, but this is the first time she has created an article celebrating a collegiate or female athlete.
Clark's vest is complete with “22” decals (her jersey number) as well as stitching that reads “NCAA women's scoring leader” and “Iowa's all-time leader in: points, assists, 3:00 pm, female genital mutilation”.
“I wish I could add all of his awards in there, but you'd need 700 jackets to fit all of that. Which is incredible,” Juszczyk told Yahoo Sports. “It's a special piece and I hope she likes it.”
State Farm, which has a name, image and likeness agreement with Clark, approached Juszczyk with the concept, and State Farm's Jake, a character seen in the company's ads, arrived at Sunday's game wearing a matching vest. .
According to an Iowa social media post, Jake appeared to present the vest to Clark following Iowa's 93-83 win over No. 2 Ohio State and Senior Day celebrations. Clark finished with 35 points, 9 assists and 6 rebounds in the contest.
“It's very special for me to be able to create, especially for a woman of her caliber,” Juszczyk told Yahoo. “She's a trailblazer in her league and it's special to be able to see her selling out these arenas and breaking all of these records… What a great way to be able to show her how much her fans love her and to be able to represent herself through a piece of clothing. To wear.”
Clark, the reigning national player of the year, now has 3,685 career points, and in the past month she set a series of scoring records in the college game, further catapulting her to stardom ahead of her professional career that begins this summer at the WNBA.
