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Ryan Hockensmith
Multiple Authors
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 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 the group needs to hit a Hail Mary when the gates open.
The Kimballs 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 p.m. to 6, 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.
RIGHT BEFORE Kendi Kimball officially gives up, she hears a voice.
“Would you like to come down with me?” the stranger asks. She points down toward the home tunnel, at a seat that Kendi instantly recognizes as perhaps the best seat in the house to interact with the Fever staff and players.
Kendi can’t believe it, and neither can the girls. They all stare up at their mom with those little kid eyes that say, Can we? Please? Can we?
“Are you serious?” Kendi asks.
“Yes,” the woman says.
The Kimballs are in disbelief. But they instantly trust Elson. You would, too. She’s wearing a WNBA T-shirt and a Fever hat. She’s 61 and single, so she makes almost every home game (she gives her tickets to friends if she can’t get to one). Elson battled back from open-heart surgery four years ago and has the vibe of someone who takes good care of our grandparents every night as a registered nurse. That’s because her job is exactly that; she works 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. every night at a long-term care facility.
She has always been a regular at Fever games, and Elson has such a warmth and steadiness that she almost instantly got to know staff members, ushers and security. “You could pretty much sit anywhere you wanted back then,” she says, only half-joking about the days of 4,000 fans at Fever games.
In 2023, when she knew the Fever were probably going to draft Clark out of Iowa with the No. 1 pick, she bought one high-priced lower-bowl season ticket for herself. She benefited from needing only one ticket, and also that as cool as her seat might be, she’s also nestled into a corner of the arena at an odd angle for watching the game itself.
Since then, she’s become a local legend in the aisles of Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Arena workers routinely point out kids who could be good candidates to stand with her near the tunnel — her quest is their quest, too. During the season opener, she was helping little Annie get set up to grab players at the tunnel when a Fever staffer showed up with a box. Inside was a Fever sweatshirt, T-shirt and hat, along with a note thanking her for being such a fantastic fan.
Within a few games, Elson realized that she had purchased a winning Powerball ticket, one that hits on more nights than it doesn’t. That came with a price — looking back and seeing dozens of defeated kids who were just out of reach from the players.
So Elson began drafting the saddest kid she could spot each night. Early last season, an attendant pulled her aside and recommended a heartbroken mom and her daughter, who had both started crying when they realized they weren’t going to be able to get near the tunnel. The mom had taken her daughter and gone to guest services to see if maybe someone could help them get closer to Caitlin. They were standing there when Elson approached them.
“Want to see Caitlin?” Elson asked. The answer was yes.
She took them to her seat, where she told them she couldn’t guarantee anything. But about 80% of the time, Clark ends up greeting and signing something for Elson’s guests. The mom and daughter from guest services were part of that 80%, and mom cried again, this time from gratitude, when she left for her seats at tipoff.
“I hate when that happens,” Elson says. “But most people end up having a much better chance to talk to Caitlin than they would have, and everybody seems happy to just be so close if she just runs by. I think every kid has gotten at least one player autograph or selfie when they’re down with me.”
On this night in July, something pulls Elson toward the three little girls with their mom. Maybe it’s nurse telepathy? Kendi Kimball is an RN, too. Elson doesn’t know that at the time. But she sees Kendi and the girls and instantly knows her draft picks for the night. As they nervously wait in the pregame, the girls chatter among themselves and Kendi and Elson swap some nursing tales to distract from their jitters.
She brings the Kimballs down, and they all squish into the area right beside the rail. The girls’ faces are beaming again as Kelsey Mitchell comes by and signs for them. Sophie Cunningham stops, too. As Clark gets activated on the court, the Kimballs get reactivated in the crowd.
But getting Clark is going to be an entirely different ballgame. As she finishes up on the court and prepares to jog into the locker room, the crowd begins to fold together and security braces for impact. It’s a little like the mob scene that happens in front of the goalie during a corner kick in soccer, where offensive players and defensive players begin to mash together and surge as one big competing blob. In this case, it’s about 100 fans cramming into the corner of the arena that has space for about 50.
Clark starts heading for the locker room as ushers, security guards and police officers all gently try to box out some of the chaos. One security guard spots two mid-30s men come streaking down the aisle from their floor seats, and he makes his body into a backward T, his face turned toward Clark and his arms outstretched to both sides.
The two men, George Atiyeh and Joseph Phillippi, had spent their vacation budget to come from the Washington, D.C., area to Indy for this game. Phillippi was turning 35 that weekend, so Atiyeh surprised his partner with two floor tickets for the Fever-Dream game. They’re both in Caitlin Clark gear as they run into the brick wall of security.
“There can be no movement when she enters the area,” he says over his shoulder. The two men, one in an Iowa jersey and the other in a Caitlin Clark No. 22, look at each other and shrug, then head back to their seats near the Fever bench. “That was disappointing,” Phillippi says. “But we still had a great time. And besides, so many kids got autographs from her instead.”
This is the part that crushes Clark. As happy as she has been to be playing again in 2026, she expressed some regret this preseason because she has much less time to try to connect with as many fans as possible. But she can’t get to everybody.
“I try to always take some time to be able to sign autographs,” Clark says. “There is definitely a balance of, I have to lock in for the game. That’s my first priority. I always try to take 10-15 minutes to sign on the way in, and that usually gives me enough time to prepare and lock in. It’s a humbling thing — when you see little girls who look up to you and maybe want to be like you, it puts great perspective on the whole situation before the game starts.”
As Atiyeh and Phillippi watch, Clark turns the other way, toward the tunnel. Despite Elson’s remarkable track record in these moments, she still feels pain in her stomach as Clark approaches. Kendi also feels wracked by nerves as the girls squeeze in close to the rail. She thinks, We angled our whole lives toward going to this game. If things don’t work out, the girls might never want to come back again.
Now, as Clark arrives, the Kimballs hope they’re not in the large group of fans who just barely miss a moment with their hero.
CLARK NEARS THE TUNNEL as Atiyeh and Phillippi turn back. The Kimballs launch into action. Kayley hangs her jersey over the edge of the rail as Clark approaches. Kiley stands right behind her with her basketball. And little Kassidy waits beside the older girls with her poster.
Clark is only a few feet away. But she’s swimming through a sea of outstretched arms with items for her to autograph. Clark signs for another kid hanging on the rail, then a few more. She has a very serious look on her face when she stops to sign. It’s not that she dislikes pausing to see people — it’s that she wants to try to get to everybody, or to as many people as possible. So her focus is hard to break.
Clark is zipping through as many autographs as possible as a countdown clock ticks to 15:00 before the game. She still has to go back into the locker room, so she needs to wind down soon. The girls wait patiently, but time is slipping away. Hopefully Caitlin gets to them.
And then, in a span of 20 seconds that somehow feels like both a millisecond and also two hours, she grabs Kayley’s jersey, then Kiley’s basketball, then Kassidy’s poster-cast, and she signs them all. Just like that. One, two, three.
The girls all exchange wide-eyed looks with each other as Clark signs, and Kendi takes a photo and steals a glance with Elson, who smiles back. Elson loves the freedom of her life, her ability to travel all over the country in her free time, and to attend almost any Fever game she wants. But she beams thinking about the next kid whose jaw will hit the floor when her eyes catch theirs during the pregame. “I never had kids myself,” she says. “So this warms my heart.”
There are so many things the Kimballs feel about Caitlin Clark that they want to tell her at this moment. That her run to the NCAA championship game will always be something that the Kimballs shared in the living room. That the girls started playing basketball because of her. That Kendi and Chris Kimball both point to her and tell their kids that that is someone they can look up to.
The Kimballs tell her none of those things.
“Thank you,” is all anybody can muster. They totally freeze. They stick around a bit longer while Clark signs for others. Then they head for their seats. Elson has to bend down to absorb the tiny hugs from the three happy girls.
The Fever pull off a memorable comeback win, and the Kimballs will never forget it.
The Kimball girls are tired on the walk back to the hotel. Kendi and her husband keep looking at their daughters, clutching their Fever gear. They think about how the girls are still so young — Kassidy 4 and the twins are 9 — yet they’re wrapping up one of the best days of their lives.
The family gets back to its hotel at close to 11 p.m., well past the kids’ bedtime. But this is a Friday in the summer, so rules can be massaged a bit. The girls have hit that stage of the night that every parent has seen once and dreaded forever after — that moment when a little kid is so tired that they get zombified into a creature of the night that barely resembles the snuggleable friend they morph into after 10 hours of sleep.
The night’s adrenaline is still coursing through their veins. Kendi and Chris let them burn off the energy slowly and steadily, with as little direct communication or eye contact as possible as they tire. After an hour or so, they all eventually lay down and get quiet. The activation had been great. Deactivation, not so much.
In the darkness, Kendi hears someone ask, “Mom, when can we go back?”
