Three-time WNBA champion Alysha Clark, who said she fell in love with basketball in Nashville as a teenager, will have a chance to play professionally in the city as part of Athletes Unlimited's upcoming season.
Clark was one of the players announced Tuesday as part of the five-on-five women's league, which will be based in Nashville in 2025. The league had previously played in Las Vegas (2022) and Dallas (2023, 2024).
Clark moved to the Nashville area with her family as a teen, and she led NCAA Division I women's hoops in scoring in 2008 and 2009 while playing for Middle Tennessee.
"I was fascinated by the history, by the support," Clark told ESPN about the atmosphere for women's basketball in Tennessee. "So just to be able to kind of come back full circle ... it's really special on so many levels. The starting point of my basketball journey was there."
Clark, 37, won WNBA titles with the Seattle Storm in 2018 and 2020 and the Las Vegas Aces in 2023, when she was the league's Sixth Woman of the Year. She will be an unrestricted free agent in 2025 and said she wants to keep playing and win more championships in the WNBA.
The 2025 AU season will be played from Feb. 5 to March 2, with all 24 games at Nashville's Municipal Auditorium. The format allows players to earn points for team victories and individual performance, and the points leader at season's end will be crowned the league champion. WNBA players Tianna Hawkins (2022), NaLyssa Smith (2023) and Allisha Gray (2024) are the previous AU champions.
Clark is just one of the players with Tennessee ties who will complete in AU in 2025. Seattle's Jordan Horston, the No. 9 pick in the 2023 draft, played for the Tennessee Lady Vols. So did Chicago Sky's Isabelle Harrison, who was born in Nashville and grew up there. Meighan Simmons is another AU signee who competed for the Lady Vols.
Other players announced by AU thus far include former UConn standouts Kia Nurse (Los Angeles Sparks) and Bria Hartley, 2023 No. 3 draft pick Maddy Siegrist (Villanova/Dallas Wings) and 2024 No. 8 draft pick Alissa Pili (Utah/Minnesota Lynx).
Clark said she welcomes the chance to play in the United States in the WNBA's offseason after several years competing overseas in the winter months.
"It's really cool to still be playing long enough where this is an option," Clark said. "For the majority of my career, I didn't have that option. I had to go overseas. It speaks to the growth of the game."
AU is one of two U.S.-based pro leagues for women's basketball. The other is Unrivaled, a 3x3 league that also will be based in one city -- Miami -- and has a short season from Jan. 17 to March 17.