![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Untitled-design-13.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nSave 30% when you preorder \u201cBecoming Caitlin Clark\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Howard Megdal\u2019s newest book will be released this June! \u201cBecoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar\u201d captures both the historic nature of Clark\u2019s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.<\/p>\n Click the link below to preorder and enter MEGDAL30<\/strong> at checkout.<\/p>\n Gustafson hopes the tales of how Pancake has been a steady source of peace during her journey as a professional athlete will help calm children \u2014 and adults \u2014 with anxiety, such as herself.<\/p>\n \u201cI think any dog owner can say the same thing, especially when you have those bad games. You\u2019re always trying to figure out ways to uplift yourself and find something positive off the court \u2014 and Pancake is definitely that,\u201d she told The Next.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPancake\u2019s Passport\u201d is the first book to be released under Gustafson\u2019s new publishing company, The Inspired Bookshelf<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m doing a little bit of a different route for publishing. I\u2019m not using a traditional publisher; I\u2019m instead making my own,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m also working with another company that is helping me make the book itself like the design, the layout and everything. It\u2019s a bit of a hybrid format of traditional and self-publishing. I wanted to add a little bit of an extra faith element to it as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Creating her own company and promoting her book allows Gustafson to tap into her marketing side. She received a bachelor\u2019s degree in marketing from the University of Iowa in 2019 and just completed her MBA from the UI\u2019s Tippie College of Business.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always had a marketing mind. I loved it in college and undergrad and being able to further explore that in my MBA,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m just excited to keep going with it. I\u2019ve always kind of had a creative mind with telling these stories and writing. That\u2019s had my heart for a really long time, especially with my dad growing up. He\u2019s an author as well. So, just to have that extra role model in my life has been really awesome. It gives me motivation to keep writing.\u201d<\/p>\n Her father, Clendon Gustafson, is a retired school administrator who has written a series of Christian children\u2019s books under his own publishing company, The Cottage in Frostwood Forest<\/a>. He has always encouraged his daughters, Megan and older sister Emily, to make time to read and write.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve spent many Saturday mornings writing together ever since she was a very little girl,\u201d he told The Next. \u201cThis is exciting for me; I\u2019m very proud of her.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Raw determination and talent<\/p>\n Far from the bright lights of Las Vegas, Gustafson grew up in Port Wing, a quiet town of about 150 people along Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin.\u00a0<\/p>\n Just like her parents and much of her extended family, Gustafson attended the South Shore School District, which averages an enrollment of around 200 students across K-12. Like in many small rural schools, students participate in nearly everything just for the programs to survive.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFor our tiny little school just for our athletic programs to even exist, pretty much every kid had to go with every sport,\u201d Clendon Gustafson said. \u201cOur numbers are so tiny that basically if a kid were to concentrate only on basketball, we wouldn\u2019t even be able to run the programs.\u201d<\/p>\n The Gustafson sisters participated in volleyball, basketball and track, excelling in all three sports. When Emily was a senior and Megan a sophomore, their dad \u2014 who was also South Shore\u2019s superintendent, K-12 principal and special education director \u2014 stepped in to coach the girls basketball team.\u00a0<\/p>\n Want even more women\u2019s sports in your inbox?<\/strong><\/p>\n Subscribe now to our sister publication The IX<\/a> and receive our independent women\u2019s sports newsletter six days a week. Learn more about your favorite athletes and teams around the world competing in soccer, tennis, basketball, golf, hockey and gymnastics from our incredible team of writers. <\/p>\n Readers of The Next now save 50% on their subscription to The IX.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a pretty good team, so I thought, \u2018Well, I\u2019m not going to just let them go without a coach, or just have anyone walk in off the street to coach them.\u2019 So, I did that one year,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n He led the team to the state tournament that season as Megan began to turn heads with her ability to score and run the floor as a 6\u20193 forward who could play any position as needed. By the time she graduated in 2015, she was Wisconsin girls high school basketball\u2019s all-time leading scorer with 3,229 points \u2014 a record that still stands today.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cShe had raw talent in high school, but we didn\u2019t have her own personal trainer or anything like that,\u201d her dad said. \u201cOur eyes were opened when she got to college that all these other players had their own personal trainers and all this type of professional training and workouts and things like that. Our minds were kind of blown when we found out about that because we didn\u2019t even have a schema for that sort of thing. We just go dribble the ball and shoot in the offseason, and that\u2019s about it. All raw work through middle school and high school. Through high school, it was raw determination and drive and strength.\u201d<\/p>\n Iowa\u2019s then-associate head coach Jan Jensen recognized that raw talent during several recruiting trips to northern Wisconsin.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI knew she would be all-Big Ten, and I felt like she\u2019d be an All-American, just because she had an uncanny ability to score, and you could tell she knew how to work,\u201d Jensen told The Next. \u201cBut until you get them here and you see them game-in and game-out, or day-in and day-out, with the way they approach their work and their goals, that\u2019s when you know.\u201d<\/p>\n One thing Jensen wasn\u2019t prepared for was Gustafson\u2019s culture shock when she got to Iowa City her freshman year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMegan\u2019s never going to be the chattiest in any group or room. That\u2019s just not who she is,\u201d said Jensen, who is now Iowa\u2019s head coach. \u201cShe was really quiet in our first team get together. Lisa [Bluder] was coaching the Pan Am Games, and I had everybody over to my house. And she just seemed quiet and really kind of off to herself. So I had coffee with her, and I said, \u2018Hey, is everything good? You\u2019re a little quiet.\u2019 She\u2019s like, \u2018I loved it. You just have to remember that there are more people on my team than I\u2019ve ever had in my class.\u2019 We had 14 or 15 on the team and her senior year in high school, she only had 11 people in her class.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Pancakes-Passport-cover.jpg\")
The cover of Megan Gustafson\u2019s children\u2019s book, \u201cPancake\u2019s Passport,\u201d which will be released Aug. 20, 2025. (Photo credit: Megan Gustafson on X\/@GustafsonMeg10<\/a>)<\/p>\n![\"Megan](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Megan-Gustafson_dad-reading.jpg\")
Clendon Gustafson reads to his young daughters, Emily (left) and Megan (right). (Photo courtesy of Clendon Gustafson)<\/p>\n![\"Locked](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/locked-on-wbb-ad.png\")
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![\"Megan](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Megan-Gustafson_family-jersey.jpg\")
Megan Gustafson stands with her family as her No. 10 is raised into the rafters during a jersey retirement ceremony Jan. 26, 2020, at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, Iowa. (Photo credit: Brian Ray\/hawkeyesports.com)<\/p>\n