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Housekeeping:
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Check me out on last week’s episode of the Cancel Me, Daddy podcast talking about Pat McAfee harassing an 18-year-old college freshman and why we have Barstool to thank for much of the manosphere.
Profiling Hailey Van Lith
Ahead of the WBNA Draft tonight, I thought I’d share a little behind-the-story of my Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover story on Hailey Van Lith.
As is the case with most big stories, this one changed a lot in the editing process.
Talking to Hailey, it became clear to me that I wanted the narrative thread of the feature to play on the fact that she is a Virgo (a zodiac sign known for meticulous planning) and the fact that nothing she had planned for her college career ended up working out the way she had hoped.
My original opening line for this story was: “Hailey Van Lith had a plan (she’s a Virgo, she likes a plan).”
When we initially began envisioning this story, I thought it would be much more about her path to redemption via her season at TCU but when I spoke with her agent the day before our call (sadly, I wasn’t able to be on-site in Fort Worth to interview her), she let me know that Hailey was actually quite frustrated with that narrative about her season. In the time between planning the story and actually doing the interviews for it, Hailey won Big 12 Player of the Year and the media really leaned into the storyline of this being a comeback season for her. But it turned out that wasn’t how Hailey saw it.
I really wanted to honor Hailey’s own POV on her career and not project too much onto her that she didn’t believe. It’s one thing to provide an outside analysis, but it’s another to assign a perspective to a subject that isn’t actually true. So I asked Hailey how she felt about the narrative about a comeback season and she replied:
“People have been labeling this as a ‘comeback,’ like I’m getting my lick back kind of thing. And I don’t think that necessarily aligns with me personally. I wouldn’t say that this was a comeback year, because I never thought that I left.”
I knew that was the other angle this story hinged on. The working headline for the story as I was writing it was “DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK.”1
following the astrology
Hailey had been doing a lot of press and I wanted to figure out the best way to get some new insights out of her. That’s why I brought up her astrology—she already knew she was a Virgo. But I shared a few other basic insights about her chart with her and that led me to a few of my favorite quotes from the piece.
For my astrology girlies: Hailey has a Libra Mercury2 (which rules her communication), a Leo Venus (which rules her relationships), and a Capricorn Mars3 (which rules conflict, competition, and sports).
A Leo Venus is going to get a lot of shit for being selfish and needing a lot of attention, but it’s also going to be a deceptively loyal placement. When I shared that with Hailey, that was when she responded with the most Leo Venus shit I’ve ever heard:
“I really think people miss out on how much relationships mean to me. I am a loyal person, and I think some people laugh at me when I say that, because they’re like, ‘You’ve transferred twice.’ Loyalty begins with honoring yourself before you can truly honor other people.”
from the cutting room floor
As is usually the case, lots of good stuff got left on the cutting room floor. In this case, that included insights from other WNBA minds about Hailey’s draft prospects. I wanted to share those here, because I think they add a lot to any story about HVL at this point in her career. They also, imo, added important context to the story because there really is a lack of agreement on whether Hailey will be a first round draft pick, or if she will end up making a WNBA roster.
“Hailey is known for uplifting her teammates and speaking highly of her coaching staff,” says , a writer at and a former WBB team manager at Syracuse University, where he says he “consistently heard positive things about Hailey.”
But despite the fact that Van Lith has been one of the most respected athletes at the collegiate level and has helped her teams win regardless of the program she was playing with, there have been real questions about her ability to be effective at the professional level. And after her difficult season at LSU, her draft stock plummeted. There were doubts whether Van Lith would be drafted at all. But the narrative has shifted dramatically—“thanks to her tremendous tenure at TCU,” Noa Dalzell writes at SB Nation, “Van Lith should (and likely will) be selected in the first round of the WNBA Draft.”
Some more reflections on point guards (and plans):
A true point guard knows that their role is to facilitate, to set their teammates up to be the best versions of themselves (to always have a plan, if I may). Van Lith takes that so seriously that it permeates every facet of how she shows up as an athlete. “She possesses a mature mindset when it comes to handling obstacles and responding to adversity,” says Hall.
“My biggest role out of anything I can do—whether that's shot-making, play-making—my number one job is to make sure everyone is ready to do what needs to be done,” she says. “I accept that. Being a leader is hard, because you get blamed for things going wrong, no matter whether it was your fault or not. But then on the back end, you get a lot of credit and a lot of praise when you know it was a team collective win.”
And what might make her an asset to a WNBA team:
She also sees her experience in so many different programs and under so many different coaches as an asset to her as she transitions to her pro career. She’s had to learn to adapt to a variety of systems and cultures, finding a way to fit into wildly disparate styles of play. It’s made her confident that she can excel wherever she may be drafted.
Van Lith “has put a ton of time into getting stronger, and finishes at the rim far more often, and more efficiently, compared to her Louisville seasons,” says Howard Megdel, founder of The Next, a women’s basketball newsroom, and author of Rare Gems: How Four Generations of Women Paved the Way for the WNBA. “The work ethic alone will get her drafted and into a camp. And I think it would be foolish to bet against her once that happens.”
Ultimately, I’m proud of the fact that I got to write an SI Swim cover story. The editing process took a bit more of my voice and perspective out of the story than I would have liked, but I think I notice that more than anyone else does. I’m not particularly precious about my words and I understand that the final product is about more than just what I put onto the page, but the editorial vision of an entire publication.
Now, let’s see where HVL ends up tonight!
ALSO: I really loved this profile of Paige Bueckers by Seerat Sohi at The Ringer.
