THE INDIANA FEVER crowd is frantic by the time Debbie Elson walks into Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
Elson has one of the best tickets in sports, hovering a few feet above the home tunnel on the floor of the arena, right in the face of Caitlin Clark and her teammates as they run in and out. That view is why her section fills with hundreds of fans hoping to get Clark's autograph.
Fans without tickets to Section 2 begin lining up hours before doors open at 5:30 p.m., roughly 90 minutes before tipoff. When the gates open, they sprint toward the section, but security allows only about 20 extra fans to join the crowd. Everyone else is turned away.
As she moves through the arena, Elson knows she'll see heartbreak from young fans who thought they would meet Clark. Those 20 -- and everyone already seated -- are fighting for Clark's attention. Most of them are about to learn that even being an arm's length away still isn't close enough.
But Elson, a night nurse in the Indianapolis area, has become an autograph angel at the arena over the years. When she approaches her seat, she scans the crowd for a fan she can help. "I try to spot the saddest kid," Elson says. "And I invite them to stand with me at my seat."
In July 2025, it's the three Kimball girls from West Texas who win the Fever lottery. Elson escorts the family down to her seat. Now Part 2 of the miracle must happen.
Will Clark stop by to see them?
A GREAT WAY to separate the stars of sports from the rock stars who do sports is how the world reacts to their pregame rituals. Think Aaron Judge's batting practice, Patrick Mahomes' pregame throws, Steph Curry's 50-footers from the tunnel and now just about everything Caitlin Clark does in the lead-up to Fever games.
Few athletes are busier before games than Clark these days. Her walk-ins and outfits have gone viral on social media and become mandatory additions to every TV broadcast. Then she gets to work on the Gainbridge Fieldhouse floor as fans sprint to get as close as possible along the rails of the arena. She's still working her way back from the worst injury season of her career, so getting "activated," as she calls it, is critical in the 90 minutes before a Fever game.
About 1,000 fans record every move as she shoots 3s and drives to the hoop before games. She often simulates rough defensive tactics by having assistant coach Austin Kelly purposely body her to simulate how physical opponents have been with her for three WNBA seasons. They work on her being "balanced when she is unbalanced," says Kelly, who played football at Duke and basketball at Georgia Southwestern State.
Clark laughs at that description. "A lot of my work, whether it is before practice or after practice, it's usually with some sort of contact," Clark tells ESPN. She raises an eyebrow and smirks, like she's about to unveil a great conspiracy to the world. "If I don't get hit, maybe I'm off balance at this point? Something to look into."
She then does a full news conference before games. On opening day this year, she talks openly about feeling butterflies again after the long layoff. She hopes the new Fever DJ will play a song she absolutely must hear before she is ready to play: "Applause" by Lady Gaga. Fans -- often in Clark shirts or jerseys with her No. 22 -- are also prompted to go wild at games with short bursts of "22" from the Taylor Swift song.
"Applause" does indeed get played on this day. By 12:40 p.m. for the 1 p.m. tipoff, Clark is officially activated. So is the crowd.
Clark doesn't just move the needle. She is the needle. Clark entered the WNBA in 2024. A year earlier, the Fever averaged about 4,000 fans a game. By 2025, attendance had jumped to 16,560. This season, all 44 Fever games are nationally televised, a first in league history.
Debbie Antonelli, a Fever analyst and Women's Basketball Hall of Famer, watches from courtside as Clark warms up. Antonelli has been around the WNBA since its beginning, and she has a name for Clark's impact: Clarkonomics.
"It's a descriptor on the disruption that our game has experienced, which has spiked all of the numbers related to our game," Antonelli says. "It is directly related to Caitlin's popularity."
It's like seeing Taylor Swift make her way onto the floor of Madison Square Garden. Before the 2026 season opener, Clark takes her last shot -- she insists on ending with a make -- then abruptly darts off the floor. A police officer stationed near the tunnel yells, "Oh s---, here she comes," and security scrambles to provide a protective shell around Clark to get her back to the locker room.
Sometimes she runs right in, and other times she stops and signs for fans. Whatever she does, the cocoon of cops and security guards must read and react. On one road trip last season to New York to play the Liberty, the ESPN broadcast team counted that Clark signed 108 autographs before she took her seat on the visiting bench. Now, imagine that being a home game.
These moments are often epic for Elson and young fans over the past three years. This season, before the May 9 opener, she brings Annie Howard down with her, leaving her mom, dad and 3-year-old brother farther up in the aisle. The Howards have tickets in this zone and live in the Indy area. Annie has gotten Clark's autograph before, so if she misses Clark on this day, she's optimistic that she will get another chance someday. "I hope she sees me," Annie says. "But if she doesn't, it will be OK."
It's more than OK -- Clark stops and signs for Annie, then about 10 other fans before she heads into the locker room.
The stakes are often much higher. Before one of Clark's last games of 2025, the Kimball family drives up to Indianapolis from West Texas with one chance, and only one chance, to see their favorite player. The trip is too far to do again, so they need to hit a Hail Mary when the gates open.
They feel major pressure when they arrive early that day at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, only to find long lines already assembling. They're three hours away from the doors opening, and with this many people trying to do the same thing, Mom Kendi and Dad Chris try to stay optimistic as they begin to realize that they're probably going home with three crushed kids.
THE THREE GIRLS run so fast. They're all under the age of 10, and Mom and Dad are trying their best to keep up. But the girls seem to be flying like they never have before.
After waiting from 3 to 6 p.m., they must bust through the gates as soon as they open for this 7:30 p.m. tipoff. The Kimballs know the odds: Usually about 20 people are allowed to come down from the upper deck to Section 2 of the lower bowl. Nos. 21 and up have to take a deflating walk to their seats in the upper deck.
The odds of everything coming together are extremely thin. They must sprint through the arena along with about 100 other fans to get to Section 2, where ushers allow some of the pack to go down near the tunnel every night. Even if they're among the lucky 20, they need to weave through the traffic of people sitting in that section to get near the rail. Then they need Clark to stop and sign autographs long enough that they can wait for people to clear out and get her attention.
But the girls have hope, and hope is a terrible thing to underestimate. They're out of breath as they run to Section 2, and Kendi has to scoop up 4-year-old Kassidy into her arms because the rushing herd is so scary. Security inside the arena is yelling, "Don't run!" the whole time, but the Kimballs and everybody else bolt right through those warnings.
When the Kimballs get there, they can't believe their luck on part 1 of the miracle Caitlin chase. Security counts them off: Kayley is No. 17, Kiley is No. 18, Kassidy is No. 19, and Kendi is No. 20. No. 21 is Chris Kimball, which means the whole family had to say, "Sorry, Dad, see you in the upper deck later."
Once she and the kids get into Section 2, Kendi's heart sinks -- they're never going to be able to squeeze down close to the tunnel. There's a pack of about 50 people ahead of them along the rail where the players will pass. The Kimballs are a logo 3 from where they would need to be to get close to Caitlin.
The girls stand in place as the Fever begin warming up. Kendi wants to tell them that they should probably just go join Dad in their seats upstairs. But she doesn't have the heart to break theirs. Not yet, anyway.
About 75 minutes before the game, Clark emerges from the tunnel. She jogs fast and doesn't stop, so the crowd can only let out an argh noise as she hits the court. The Kimball girls are still smiling, though. They almost can't believe that the basketball player they always watch on TV is right there.
For a half hour or so, the Kimballs wait on the fringes of Section 2 as Fever players warm up. Kayley is standing there with a No. 22 Clark jersey. Kiley has a basketball and a marker. And little Kassidy, still a year away from kindergarten, rolls up a Fever poster and wraps it around her arm like a cast to manage how unwieldy it had become in the crowd (it is nearly as big as her). They all fell in love with Clark -- and basketball -- watching her at Iowa from their home in West Texas. They would watch her games together in their living room, with Kendi and Chris. Those were formative family moments for the girls, and maybe even more so for their parents.
There's almost no feeling in life that compares with the realization that your kids have fallen in love with something, and you've played a part as matchmaker. You love their love, and that makes it our love. As kids grow up and move out and on with their lives, those things, the ones that everybody loved together at the same time, are a family's most cherished items.
"Life is bigger than basketball," Kendi says. "But it's so important to have good role models for my three girls. Caitlin certainly is that."
But on this night, the girls' smiles are fading. They see that there are rows of people deep from getting close to Clark on this night. As Clark is becoming activated, the girls seem to be powering down.
Kendi records a few videos and takes a bunch of photos, too, as the Fever get ready to run into the locker room before pregame intros. The girls are on their tiptoes, craning to get a look as Clark stretches out at midcourt.
This is the last chance for fans. The crowd knows it, too. People begin to squeeze toward that area, even as ushers do their best to encourage fans to stay in their spots. Kendi has a sinking feeling in her gut that maybe her girls will end up carrying home the same items they came with. She keeps worrying, What if the girls are devastated and never want to come back? She texts Chris and lets him know they're going to pack it in.
And then, as she makes her way to her seat, Debbie Elson sees their faces.
