After most of their 2025 was defined by recovery rooms, Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark and USC Trojans’ JuJu Watkins have returned to the spotlight. However, as they enter Duke’s K-Center in Durham for the USA Basketball women’s national team training camp, the next question is how their recoveries have progressed. Today, the two superstars of the sport have clarified the same.

“I’m at 100%,” Clark told reporters at the camp. “Obviously, I need to knock off a little bit of rust and get my lungs back, but my body feels really good. I feel like I’m in a really good spot. So, my main goal is just staying that way.”

While hoping to extend Fever’s success from the 2024 WNBA season to the next, Clark had to face a series of four injuries. After averaging 16.5 points, 8.8 assists, and 5 rebounds, she was ultimately sidelined for the season due to a right groin issue. However, the 2024 league ROTY arrived at the camp and is already shooting her signature logo-3s to keep everyone’s hopes alive.

Under Duke’s championship banners, Caitlin Clark wore a USA senior national team practice jersey for the first time, and she looked every bit like herself, attacking off the dribble, rising confidently, and, most importantly, reaching her current target!

“My main goal for today was to smile and have fun,” Clark further added. “You take for granted getting to play basketball. You always say that you don’t want to, but then when you get hurt, you realize you probably did. For myself, obviously, the year was pretty challenging. I missed being on the court and playing. I would have taken 10 bad games in a row just to be out there playing because that’s how much I love it and how much I love competing with my teammates.”

Along with Clark, her supposed successor in the NCAA world is also making a comeback on her own terms at the camp.

Nearly nine months after tearing the ACL in her right knee this March during the 2024-25 NCAA Tournament, JuJu Watkins announced she would miss her entire 2025-26 collegiate basketball season in September. However, she is also easing back into basketball training. In an interview with ESPN, the USC star confirmed that she has begun light workouts, including individual shooting and ball-handling drills.

“Whatever I can do, I am trying to maximize that,” Watkins said.

However, the journey to where she is now wasn’t easy.

“I tried to push off that decision as much as possible,” Watkins admitted. “But I had to come to terms with where I was at. Getting over that mental curve has been the biggest thing.”

For now, the Trojans’ star won’t participate in on-court drills during the Team USA camp. Still, she is embracing the opportunity to absorb leadership and basketball IQ from the elite talent around her. For her, simply being in the room still matters, which was always her dream.

Neither Caitlin Clark nor JuJu Watkins is chasing box scores or headlines. One is rediscovering joy after months away from the game, and the other is learning how to lead and absorb even while sidelined. But inside a Team USA camp, both delivered the same message without saying it outright: the hardest part is behind them.

Caitlin Clark draws praise from Team USA Coach

The senior national team camp is being led by 2025–28 USA Basketball and Duke’s head coach, Kara Lawson. Her staff includes 2023 USA national team coach and Fever head coach Stephanie White, Golden State Valkyries’ HC Natalie Nakase, and Phoenix Mercury HC Nate Tibbetts. With Day 1 of the camp already under their belt, the team’s head coach, Lawson, is impressed with how little the Indiana Fever star appeared to have lost despite months away from live action.

“She’s a terrific player, really locked in and focused,” the coach said. “I thought she looked good on both ends. And I thought that she hadn’t missed a beat.”

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For Caitlin Clark, the praise carried weight.

This was her first senior national team camp, after she was left off the 2024 Olympic team, and her first real test after a season defined by setbacks. Yet inside a gym filled with elite talent, including Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese, and Cameron Brink, she didn’t look like someone easing her way back in.

“We know each other a little bit, play against each other, and played with each other on certain teams in the past, even in the WNBA,” Clark said. “At the same time, it’s competitive. You all want to win, you’re all fighting for a spot.”

This three-day training camp serves as a critical evaluation period for the future of the USA Women’s National Team. The immediate focus will be on identifying the core group that will compete at the 2026 FIBA Women’s World Cup in Berlin next September, while also laying the groundwork for the long-term build toward the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.