With Caitlin Clark and more, WNBA cleared for takeoff in Iowa and the U.S.

The WNBA is a new, 28-year-old thing in Iowa.

It’s new in that few here had ever paid it much attention. But now, given that all sorts of people in these parts either succeeded or failed in efforts to watch the Indiana Fever’s first preseason game on some sort of livestreaming last Friday, it is of great interest.

Caitlin Clark is the reason, of course. Where Clark goes, people follow. A Dallas-Fort Worth television station had a crew at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport last Thursday to record the Fever arriving there, commercially.

Which leads to another story. On Tuesday, the WNBA announced it was close to starting chartered flights for all of its teams on every trip. This is something the league’s players have long wanted. Now Clark’s in the league, and voila!

Wednesday brought news that television stations in Des Moines and Davenport will carry 17 of the Fever’s 40 regular-season games as part of a network set up by media company TEGNA that also includes stations in Louisville, Cincinnati and several other markets.

I’m not about to tell the Cedar Rapids stations there’s an opportunity out there, not being one who wants to deal with their out-of-state corporate overlords.

Most of the Fever’s games will easily be found to Eastern Iowa viewers. Eight will be on Ion, one of those networks you may not know you have in your cable or satellite packages, but almost surely do.

ESPN/ESPN2 will feature six Fever games. Five will be on Amazon Prime. ABC and CBS have two apiece, and CBS Sports Network has another.

The Fever have their second and final preseason game Thursday night, at home. They begin the regular season next Tuesday at Connecticut as the first game of an ESPN2 doubleheader. The nightcap is Phoenix at the two-time defending champion Las Vegas Aces, a team that adds to Iowa’s interest.

Megan Gustafson, a National Player of the Year at Iowa, is on the Aces. So is rookie Kate Martin of the Hawkeyes. Former Iowa State players Bridget Carleton and Stephanie Soares play for Minnesota and Dallas, respectively.

Las Vegas didn’t need the addition of Clark to the WNBA to build on its following, having sold all of its 8,600 season tickets on the heels of repeating as champs. It did, however, move a home game against Indiana from its 10,000-seat arena at the Mandalay Bay casino to the 20,000-seat T-Mobile Arena.

It isn’t just Clark who is pumping more oxygen into the WNBA. The Chicago Sky seem to have caught their city’s attention with the addition of rookie Angel Reese of LSU.

Reese was the seventh pick in this year’s WNBA draft, but comes in as a star. She attended the Met Gala hoop-de-doo in New York on Monday night alongside all sorts of A-listers from Nicole Kidman to Kim Kardashian to Bad Bunny to Ariana Grande to … you get the idea.

Tuesday, Reese had 13 points in 19 minutes in the Sky’s preseason win over New York in Chicago. Among those in the crowd was the No. 1 pick in the recent NFL Draft, quarterback Caleb Williams of the Chicago Bears.

It isn’t the WNBA I saw in 2000 when I was assigned to go to Salt Lake City to do a story on former Iowa player Amy Herrig of Dubuque and former Iowa State player Stacy Frese of Cedar Rapids, who were teammates on the Utah Starzz.

Like Carver-Hawkeye Arena used to be for Iowa women’s basketball games, the then-Delta Center had its balcony curtained off for Starzz games. On a warm Friday night in Utah, not a lot of people were drawn to see their WNBA team host the Detroit Shock.

The announced attendance was a season-high 7,649. “Announced” was the operative word.

Utah and Detroit left the league soon enough, as did WNBA teams in six other cities. The league survived, though, and now is positioned to leap forward as more of its players enter the national sports consciousness led by Iowa’s own Clark.

Thursday’s Indiana preseason game is on the WNBA app, at 6 p.m., CT. After that, you’ll have an easy time finding the games of Clark and all the brilliant players she will play with and against.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com