Caitlin Clark Gets Assist From Iowa Alumnus for Basketball Line

PHOTO COURTESY WILSON Caitlin Clark (center) joins fellow Hawkeye Chris Rickert (pictured far left) and the Wilson basketball team earlier this year for the season 2 launch of their product line.

Christopher Rickert (13BBA) will never forget how it felt to play for the black and gold.

“It was kind of the dream come true, honestly,” says the former Hawkeye men’s basketball team walk-on. “The first time I saw my last name on the back of an Iowa jersey was pretty surreal.”

More than a decade after he last stepped on the court for the Hawkeyes, Rickert returned to Carver-Hawkeye Arena again last season—this time to help the Wilson Sporting Goods company present an Iowa career achievement ball to Caitlin Clark (24BBA) during her jersey retirement ceremony.

PHOTO COURTESY CHRIS RICKERT Caitlin Clark holds a Hawkeye career achievement ball presented by Chris Rickert of Wilson during her jersey retirement ceremony at an Iowa women's basketball game in February 2025.

As the senior director of global product at Wilson, Rickert has worked closely with Clark throughout the process of designing basketballs for the Wilson x Caitlin Clark product line that launched last year. “The Caitlin Clark project has been one of the true highlights of my career at Wilson,” says Rickert.

Now based out of Chicago, Rickert grew up playing basketball in Iowa. The Sioux City native won a high school state championship as a senior but thought it would be his last game. Instead, he played intramurals as a freshman at Iowa, where he heard about the Gray Squad—a group of practice players who scrimmage against the Hawkeye women’s basketball team to prepare it for upcoming games. Rickert joined sophomore year. “I just loved everything about it, going back to practice, feeling like I was back part of a team,” he says.

A spot on the Hawkeye men’s basketball team opened his junior year, and he joined the squad as a walk-on from 2011-13.

When Rickert graduated from the Tippie College of Business, he knew he wanted a career that mixed sports with business. He joined Wilson in 2013, working his way up to product development, where he has been for eight years. His job includes creating footballs, volleyballs, and soccer balls for some of the top leagues across the globe.

PHOTO COURTESY CHRIS RICKERT Before joining Wilson, Chris Rickert played two seasons as a walk-on for the Hawkeye men's basketball team.

Rickert paid close attention to Clark’s rise to the national spotlight. When he saw her using the Wilson ball in the 2023 NCAA tournament game in which Iowa beat South Carolina, he began to think, “She’s an absolute generational talent that inspired so many people to start watching women’s basketball around the world. We’ve got to find a way to be a part of this.”

The Caitlin Clark Signature Series, according to Wilson, aims to “inspire players everywhere to take center court and center stage to play the game they love.” Wilson created the product line by sending the WNBA guard surveys on her personality and preferences, including favorite color, hobbies outside basketball, and what she finds most meaningful. That led to a blue basketball (her favorite color), a green ball with a hidden golf motif, and phrases like “Dream Big” being incorporated into the designs.

Rickert says returning to his alma mater to present Clark with the ball he helped design was a full-circle moment. “There are so many spiderwebs of connection that day on the court that made it impactful,” he says.

That included talking to the Indiana Fever star about her own experience with the Gray Squad. “Back in my day, I’m thankful I didn’t have to guard Caitlin in practice,” says Rickert, “because she would have absolutely cooked me.”