LOS ANGELES -- Iowa basketball star Caitlin Clark was honored as the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year on Monday night.
She received the Honda Cup in a ceremony at UCLA. It's the second consecutive year that a women's basketball player won the award, as South Carolina's Aliyah Boston was the recipient in 2022. Overall, 17 basketball players have won the Honda Cup -- the most of any sport.
Clark, the AP women's basketball Player of the Year, helped Iowa reach the national championship game for the first time in school history this past April before the team lost to LSU.
The junior became the first Division I women's basketball player to have over 1,000 points and 300 assists in the same season.
Other finalists for the award were Texas senior volleyball player Logan Eggleston and Stanford sophomore golfer Rose Zhang.
"It is much different than any award show -- it's the best from every women's sport in college athletics, and that's what makes it so much fun," Clark said of the Honda Cup. "I get to learn what the other athletes' daily lives are like. I'm their biggest fans as well. I try to make time for every women's sport and want to help elevate their sports to the next level, too."
Clark said she tries to go to other Iowa women's sporting events to cheer on her fellow Hawkeyes.
"It makes me want to watch and support them even more," Clark said. "If you're not watching women's sports, you're truly missing out. Now is the time to tune in, as the sky's the limit for women's sports."
Clark is in the midst of a busy summer. She threw out the first pitch at an Iowa Cubs baseball game on her bobblehead night there in early June. On July 5, she will play in the John Deere Classic Pro-Am golf event with fellow Iowan Zach Johnson, who is the U.S. Ryder Cup captain.
And she is looking forward to next basketball season and a chance to win a third Big Ten tournament title and try to advance again to the women's Final Four.
"We lost two starters, people that contributed a lot to our team," Clark said of starters Monika Czinano and McKenna Warnock. "But we have a lot of young people we are bringing along. We want to be right back where we were. I think the thing I'm most excited about is we're going to have a sold-out arena for every single [home] game."
The Associated Press and ESPN's M.A. Voepel contributed to this report.