INDIANAPOLIS— In the middle of a four-games-in-eight-days stretch ending Sunday, the Indiana Fever hosted a game-day event called “Kids Day.”

If one surveys the Fever crowd at Gainbridge Fieldhouse it practically always seems like Kids Day, with a remarkable number of girls and boys 12-and-under filling seats on weekend afternoon dates and even on week-day nights since there is no school the next day in the middle of the summer.

This particular time the Fever featured a hoops tip-off at noon on a Wednesday to emphasize the point, and not only kids driven by parents showed up, but groups from summer camps were welcomed to the W.

 

Freedman

To a large degree, rookie guard Caitlin Clark has been the Pied Piper of the Fever this season, with the team on that day and on almost all others, selling out the building at 17,274, but also selling out everywhere else on the road when they travel.

Clark, this year’s No. 1 WNBA draft pick out of the University of Iowa, has been good for business and her popularity, Fever winning or losing, has been stamped on the young fans’ minds.

The Fever was 11-14 after this stretch, Clark was compiling excellent rookie statistics, but what might be most telling for the future is how the Fever is creating a new bottom-up fan base. Yes, even better if the team wins, but did you have fun, mom asks the 10-year-old?

There is enough time later to learn about strategic fouling, about making sure you cross the 10-second-line in under 10 seconds, and when a fouled player gets two shots.

It will surprise no one to hear that Clark, now 22, became a basketball fan early in her youth. “As long as I can remember,” Clark said.

She went to her brother’s games in Iowa. She attended Drake University games in Des Moines, not far from her home. Drake tickets were probably an easier get than Fever ducats.

“I just loved being around the game,” Clark said.

The Fever atmosphere includes loud music, a mingling mascot, the type of food one might obtain at the County Fair, uncounted thousands of fans wearing Clark’s No. 22 jersey (Iowa version or Indiana version) and just about everyone else seated near the kids rooting for the same thing.

“It’s a fun day,” said Clark, who regularly signs autographs for kids. “It makes for special memories for them. They get to do something they don’t ordinarily get to do. I would have been ecstatic.”

Meaning if there had been a WNBA team headquartered near her that conducted a Kids Day when she was young, she would have been all in.

Fever coach Christie Sides, who is from Louisiana, said she remembers schools in her home state not fielding teams because not enough kids wanted to play. Not a problem in Indiana, home of Basketball Central, but nonetheless the Fever represent a group of grown-up women playing the sport at its highest level who simply by taking the court can be role models.

“You get the kids into the arena,” Sides said, “and they think, ‘Maybe I can play.’”

Maybe they can. Maybe 10 years from now, one little girl who saw her first pro game this season will emerge from college as a star saying she was inspired by the Fever and Caitlin Clark the way Clark has said she was a huge fan of and inspired by former star Maya Moore.

Moore won NCAA titles playing for the University of Connecticut and won multiple WNBA crowns with the Minnesota Lynx. Clark has told the story of how she got a hug from Moore and that stuck with her.

The game itself the Fever played on Kids Day will likely not be etched in the memory quite so clearly. It was a messy show and could have been labeled “Kids don’t try this at home,” at least for the first three quarters.

Trying to transmit a marvelous experience, the Fever played pretty horribly, falling behind 76-55 while committing 23 turnovers (definitely don’t try that at home). Then, performing the old flip-the-switch trick, the Fever all at once turned into a super team, played a brilliant fourth quarter and almost pulled out a hopeless case before losing 89-84.

If there was a lesson in there for youngsters, it was to never give up.

The women of the Fever are still young women themselves, in their early 20s, or perhaps early 30s. Some, like forward Katie Lou Samuelson, are young mothers. But depending where they grew up, where their high school or college teams were located, they didn’t always have this depth of vociferous fan backing. They didn’t have role models right in front of them that they have become.

“Any time we can have young fans, it’s amazing,” Samuelson said. “They’re loving it.”

That’s true. Win or lose. When it comes to the kids’ Fever support, it’s blind devotion.