🔴Q&A: Aces' Alysha Clark revealed the 1 thing she still fears after winning 3 WNBA championships🏀
1Q&A: Aces' Alysha Clark revealed the 1 thing she still fears after winning 3 WNBA championships
Alysha Clark knows that her WNBA career will come to an end sooner rather than later, and when it does, she wants to be ready for life after basketball.
Clark was originally drafted by the San Antonio Silver Stars (now the Las Vegas Aces) in 2010 and spent time playing overseas before landing with the Seattle Storm, where she won two championships. After moving on from the Storm and joining the Washington Mystics for a period of time, she landed back with the franchise that originally drafted her. Clark’s time in Vegas has proven that not only could she still hoop, but she could do so at a high level. In 2023, Alysha earned a third championship and WNBA Sixth Player of the Year honors. Still, she can’t help but wonder what will happen off the court when she steps away from basketball. It’s why she’s exploring her options with Fanatics.
As part of Fanatics’ Athlete Immersion Program, Clark and several other athletes recently received access to learning modules focused on core business curriculum and hands-on experience. The curriculum includes sessions on topics like entrepreneurship, innovation and AI.
“I have more years behind me than I do in front of me,” Clark told For The Win. “For the last few years, I’ve been honing in on that and trying to figure it out. Now that I have somewhat of an idea, I want to put myself in as many positions as possible to learn about spaces I know nothing about.”
Ahead of the start of the 2024 WNBA season, Clark spoke with For The Win about why life after basketball matters, what keeps her driven to win a fourth championship, and whether she likes the color scheme of the Aces’ new uniforms, which had fans in a frenzy for several days.
After my father passed, I told myself I was going to stop putting stuff off. I’m going to make the sacrifice not to play overseas to invest in what my future looks like when I’m done playing. I don’t want to be an athlete that finishes and says, ‘What am I gonna do?’.
As a natural planner, I want to know before that.
It would have helped me hone in and probably get things off the ground sooner than now. I try not to dwell on it because I can’t go back and change that. I look at it as things I did or didn’t do gave me perspective that I needed for moments like this.
Maybe at the beginning of my career, I wouldn’t have been as open and ready to hear the lessons. Maybe it took that time for me to really develop and figure out who I was and what I was truly passionate about. Maybe I wasn’t ready for that then, and the good Lord made sure that I was ready for these opportunities mentally and maturity-wise to receive what I’ve been getting.
I never want to be complacent about anything in life because there’s so much that we don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know. There are so many things that I’ve never experienced. I’m a curious person. There’s always something to learn, and that’s what keeps me going.