Caitlin Clark’s star power is undeniable. A South Jersey sportswriter chronicled her ascent — and the history behind it.

The history of women’s basketball in Iowa is a century deep. For longtime sports journalist and author Howard Megdal, detailing that history is crucial to understanding Caitlin Clark, the Hawkeyes sensation who now stars for the WNBA’s Indiana Fever.

Megdal’s eighth book, Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar, comes out June 17. It looks at Clark’s rise to stardom in context of the history of women’s basketball in the state of Iowa.

Megdal, from Cherry Hill, will make four book signing appearances across Philadelphia and South Jersey. He will be at the Cherry Hill Public Library at 7 p.m. on June 18, the Marlton Barnes & Noble at noon on June 22, Head House Books at 6:30 p.m. July 9, and the Brotherly Love Card Show at Congregation Beth El in Cherry Hill from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on July 13.

Megdal knew he wanted to write a book on Clark when she started her college career at Iowa in the 2020-21 season. From his time reporting on women’s college basketball for various outlets, Megdal had an understanding of Iowa as a women’s hoops hotbed. He also recognized that Clark had an opportunity to become a national phenomenon.

“Seeing the trajectory [of Clark] and simultaneously seeing and knowing from my own separate reporting what brought us to this moment, it felt to me increasingly like we were seeing these threads fuse,” Megdal said. “I thought it required a book-length study of it in order for people to understand why this was happening now.”

Megdal has written seven other books, but none on subjects as high-profile as Clark. He was compelled by Clark’s ascent to stardom to document this moment in women’s basketball and compare it with the past.

“It was blowing up in real time, as I’m doing it,” Megdal said. “There is this sense that there is something very significant in the ‘now’ that you have to capture at the same time as capturing what came before.”

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The book looks at the origins of basketball in high schools across Iowa and chronicles Clark’s stardom with the Fever.

Megdal’s book covers more than 100 years of basketball history in Iowa. That includes current Hawkeyes coach and former Drake point guard Jan Jensen and her grandmother, Dorcas Andersen.

Andersen was a star high school player in the early 1920s and kept diaries of her time playing six-on-six girls’ basketball in Iowa. Jensen made them available to Megdal, who was struck by the similarities between Andersen’s diary and the journeys of modern athletes.

“Being able to look into them and see the same push and pull,” Megdal said, “of basketball, and living off the court, and taking basketball seriously, and the fear of having it taken away that is still present today was remarkable to me. The fact that we are, in so many ways, telling the same story here, just in different circumstances.”

One of the players Megdal spoke with extensively for the book was Molly Bolin Kazmer, who played six-on-six high school basketball in Iowa and five-on-five college basketball at Grand View. Kazmer, known in her playing days as Molly Bolin, was the first player to sign a contract with the short-lived Women’s Professional Basketball League in 1978. Playing for the Iowa Cornets, Kazmer served as the face of the WBL for the three seasons it existed.

Now, Kazmer is part of Legends of the Ball Inc., a nonprofit that promotes and preserves the history of the WBL. Through the organization, Kazmer travels to women’s basketball events across the country and educates fans on the origins of professional women’s basketball.

“It’s inspiring,” Kazmer said. “A lot of people that didn’t know this information find it really fascinating. … I think you cheat people, the young people that would be inspired by this, that they don’t know this history.”

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With her place in the history of professional women’s basketball, she understands the building of the game that allowed Clark to emerge as a star.

“There’s really a new level of interest right now, thanks to Caitlin Clark,” Kazmer said. “People are curious, ‘How did this happen?’ You just don’t snap your fingers, and there it is. It’s a long process of growing the game and taking it to new levels.”

Megdal’s book on Clark is only part of the work that he does to cover women’s sports. He founded and edits The IX, a newsletter that covers a different women’s sport each day, except Sunday. He founded The Next in 2020 and also serves as its editor-in-chief, overseeing daily coverage of women’s basketball at the college and pro levels. The Next drew an audience of 30 million readers in 2024, he said.

“There is a huge audience looking for women’s sports coverage that reflects a full buy-in,” Megdal said. “That’s exactly what we are and what we’ve done.”

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After writing three books in the last four years, Megdal plans to take some time off from being an author. He still covers the WNBA daily for The Next and writes a column for Baseball Prospectus, but he’s planning to spend some extra time with his family this summer instead of writing a book. Still, he plans to keep an eye out for the subject of his next book.

“There’s always something,” Megdal said. “It’s something I’m going to need to dive deeper into than I can in an article or a series of articles. And when that comes, I’ve been through eight of them, so I’ll know it.”