the indy city (cc + ns)

knowing everything at 17 (prelude)

At a very young age, Caitlin realized she was good at basketball. At fourteen, she even considered herself great. On her varsity team, on Team USA, on her AAU team, at the park with friends, and against her brothers, Caitlin was great.  She was confident, for all of the right reasons.

At an even younger age, Caitlin knew she wanted to go to the University of Connecticut to play basketball. Because she was good, that always felt like a possibility. It was not definite, because nothing ever is, but it was well within the realm of possibility. UConn always felt just out of reach that she could strive for it, but not close enough that she did not have to work for it. 

Caitlin grew up with UConn women's basketball. Any game she could watch, she did. At fifteen, the ending of their one-hundred-game win streak was enough to make her shed a tear. Her school friends laughed at her, while her parents photographed her sorrow to make light of the situation. Her mother saved the picture 'just in case any of her future teammates visited and wanted to see just how invested Caitlin was.' 

In hotel rooms with Paige during tournaments, on two full beds just a few feet away from each other, she frequently joked that the room sharing was a prerequisite for their college life. In Holiday Inns and Hiltons and Marriots, the two of them would bicker and laugh and daydream about the future. At UConn, together, they would probably tear each other apart within an hour or two.

"I'll sleep on whatever bed's bigger!" Paige would often retort back, to which Caitlin would explain, for the umpteenth time, that both beds would be the same size in a dorm room. Paige always said it was a feeling, which of course, prompted countless eye rolls back. 

In the car, with a parent or coach or other adult, there was always a silly fight about who would do the driving around campus. Hailey found it funny most of the time, besides when she sat in the middle of Paige and Caitlin. Harmlessly, she suggested they pick based on who was taller, which unknowingly sparked another uncontrollable debate. 

The debates, the laughter, and the talks of being roommates for longer than a week all halted incredibly fast during the real recruitment process. After verbal commitments, unofficial visits, and emails, none of which involved the University of Connecticut, Caitlin still had hope. Geno Auriemma never attending one of Caitlin's games deflated the confidence that developed over time, and the hope she had harbored since the end of her sophomore year.

She wasn't great.

She was barely good enough.

Not as good as Paige, who she wished a genuine congratulations to while holding back tears. They would always have USA basketball and hypotheticals but were not blessed with the ability to end the disputes of their early teen years.  Paige could take the nonexistent bigger bed in a dorm room. Her conversations with Caitlin would be rehashed with another girl during summer workouts. Paige could even drive around campus, with someone who would not have argued the position of being a passenger princess. 

She was not good enough for UConn, a pipe dream more than an attainable goal. She never received a phone call or got to meet the man she spent years watching and picturing the day he coached her. The video of her crying over a loss would never be shared to embarrass her because she was not given that opportunity. Instead, it would rot in a camera roll, only to be brought back up during the 2024 Final Four following another UConn loss.

She was not good enough to go as far as she thought she would have. As a lifelong Taylor Swift fan with an obsession with the artist's third album, Caitlin had always screamed along to "Mean" as though it was prophetic. One day she'd be living in a big, old city, and as a child, anywhere with good basketball was a big, old city. 

It took a while for Caitlin to consider the other options. She had blinders on, intentionally, but in the aftermath, all it left her with was a school that did not want her and a coach that did not care to know her. Fresh out of the slammer (three weeks of rotting in bed immediately after practices and school and barely eating anything), she finally turned away from the University of Connecticut for good. 

It wasn't long before Caitlin had nearly decided on the University of Notre Dame. It was everything she wanted. It was just far enough, with a gorgeous campus and a team that she could improve while it improved her. She felt wanted. 

Until Lisa Bluder called again and she realized she was not ready to leave Iowa yet. Not her mom or her dad, her brothers, her friends, her home. Then, she felt needed. 

What seventeen-year-old Caitlin did not know was that years of prophecizing about a big city and the several weeks she spent considering the road not taken would culminate in Indianapolis, where she'd be drafted to first overall at twenty-two. 

Indiana had waited for her long enough.