Photography TAYLOR BALLANTYNE/Sports Illustrated
Photographer Taylor Ballantyne/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
Hair PAUL NORTON Makeup KATHERINE ANN MELLINGER Production CINDI BLAIR PRODUCTIONS Location FT WORTH TEXAS
Art Direction WORKTABLE NYC
APRIL ISSUE ‘25
Words Frankie de La Cretaz
When Hailey Van Lith arrived at the University of Louisville for her freshman season, she was one of the most talked about players in the country. She was expected to be a star, and it’s what she had prepared herself for since she was young, training with her dad and being mentored by basketball legend Kobe Bryant. The path for the pros seemed inevitable, and she planned exactly how she wanted to get there (she’s a Virgo after all). “I was one of the girls that was thinking about possibly entering the draft as a junior,” Van Lith says shortly before suiting up for her final NCAA women’s basketball tournament, this time with TCU. “As soon as I hit eligible age, I was ready to go. I was like, There’s no way you can keep me in college for a fifth year.”
I wouldn't say that this was
a comeback year, because I never thought that I left.
Hailey Van Lith is Unbreakable Frankie de la Cretaz
Hailey Van Lith is Sports Illustrated Swimsuit's April 2025 Digital Cover model.
WHEN THE JOURNEY IS THE DREAM
But life, as we know, has a way of upending even the best-laid plans. Instead of turning pro after graduating with a degree in finance from Louisville, Van Lith transferred to LSU in April 2023 to play for the reigning national champions and high-profile coach Kim Mulkey. Excited by the opportunity to compete for a national championship title, Van Lith took advantage of the fact that the team was in need of a new point guard. As it turned out, Van Lith found herself in a program that wasn’t a great fit for her style of play or her personality. By the time LSU lost to the University of Iowa in the Elite Eight last March, Van Lith’s seeming inability to guard superstar Caitlin Clark had become an internet meme.
Her WNBA draft stock seemed to be falling, so she decided to use her fifth year of eligibility and transferred to TCU as a graduate student last spring. The decision to move to a program that had been the worst in the Big 12 just two years earlier was a surprise to many, but it ended up being transformative for Van Lith. She wasn’t looking for a program that would result in having all eyes on her. She’d done that, and in fact, it had made her miserable.
Swimsuit by LSPACE | Jeans by Dries Van Noten
She recently revealed that she had struggled with her mental health throughout her college career, even feeling suicidal and “trapped” despite her on-court success. She wanted to go somewhere she felt she could put her head down and sharpen the kind of game she likes to play, one where plenty of freedom and plenty of space would allow her to create plays on the court—but also discover who she wanted to be off of it.
Van Lith is what people in the basketball world—her teammates, her coaches, even her agent—refer to as “a dog.” She grinds, she fights, and when the clock is winding down and you need a big shot, she’s the player whose hands you want the ball in. Despite the fact that she is considered undersized at 5’9,”she has consistently demonstrated her ability to create her own shot, score in clutch moments, rebound effectively and play with confidence.
Born and raised in Cashmere, Wash., Van Lith shined from a young age. At Cashmere High School, she became the all-time leading scorer in Washington state history. She was named a McDonald’s All-American and entered college as one of the top recruits in her class. During her three seasons in Louisville, she earned first-team All-ACC honors twice and made a Final Four appearance. At LSU she averaged 11.6 points and 3.6 assists per game, and last July she won a bronze medal for Team USA in 3x3 basketball at the Paris Olympics.
Swimsuit by Vitamin A Swim | Top by Saint Laurent
“He has just breathed life into me,” she continued. Van Lith blossomed at TCU, adding even more depth to her game while averaging 17.9 points, 4.6 rebounds and 5.4 assists per game. She is now the first player in NCAA history, men’s or women’s, to play in the Elite Eight five times, capping off a 2025 season in which she was named the Big 12 Player of the Year.
“People have been labeling this as a ‘comeback,’ like I’m getting my lick back kind of thing,” Van Lith says. “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.” As an off-court personality, Van Lith has historically been a little guarded, something that’s becoming exceedingly rare in the age of NIL. On the surface, Van Lith would seem to be a natural fit for this new era. She was one of the best point guards in the college game, and she’s also blonde and conventionally attractive. She was the third most followed athlete from this year’s March Madness pool, with more than 1.2 million social media followers. (Only UConn’s Paige Bueckers, the projected No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft, and LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson ranked higher.) But the only game Van Lith has ever been interested in playing is the one happening on the court.
Prior to this season, she kept her public comments opaque, preferring to put the focus on her performance on the court and spotlighting the teammates she had around her. She’s a bit like a cross between Diana Taurasi—who wasn’t afraid to talk sh– and get chippy during a game—and Sue Bird—who spent the first part of her career letting her play speak for itself and keeping her off-court personality much closer to the vest.
Swimsuit by WeWoreWhat
A true point guard knows that their role is to facilitate, to set their teammates up to be the best versions of themselves. Van Lith takes that so seriously that it permeates every facet of how she shows up as an athlete. “My biggest role out of anything I can do—whether that’s shotmaking, playmaking—my number one job is to make sure everyone is ready to do what needs to be done,” she says. “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.”
That leadership was evident even at LSU, where Van Lith often took a backseat to players with bigger games and bigger names, like Angel Reese and Johnson. But when her Black teammates faced a flood of racist harassment from fans and the media, it was Van Lith who called it out and had their backs. She carried that same mindset to TCU, using her experiences gained across three different programs to guide her teammates in her final collegiate season.
“The biggest part of my leadership mindset is to connect individually with all my teammates and to let them know that I really do care about them, and it's not just what they can do for me on the court,” she says. “Especially being an athlete, I feel like a lot of times we just feel used. So I try every day to make my teammates feel like they’re worth something if they never pick up a ball again.
“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.”
She sees her experience in different programs and under 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.
Loyalty begins with honoring yourself before you can truly honor other people.
Swimsuit by Saint Laurent | Bracelets by Saint Laurent
Looking to share in all of this growth and associated revenue, the WNBA players opted out of their existing collective bargaining agreement after the 2024 season and must now negotiate a new deal by the end of October. Several players, including Reese, DiJonai Carrington and Napheesa Collier, have already hinted at the possibility of a lockout if negotiations don’t go their way.
Van Lith will enter the league under the current rookie contract, which is roughly $75,000 (the scale varies based on how high a player is selected in the draft). But the college players who are drafted into the WNBA after this season stand to potentially make much more. That will depend on the players’ ability to come to the negotiation table as a united front—something that is a natural part of a team sport like basketball.
Swimsuit by Vitamin A Swim | Top by Saint Laurent
The version of Van Lith entering the WNBA isn’t just a better player. She’s a freer, bolder version of herself—on and off the court. This Van Lith seems lighter and happier, someone who would step out of her comfort zone and start her pro career with a SI Swimsuit photo shoot.
“My initial reaction was, I was intimidated,” Van Lith says of the decision to shoot for SI Swimsuit. “I didn't know if I would be comfortable in that kind of setting, but I wanted to try something that I had never tried. I would regret it a lot if I let my insecurities or my reservations hold me back from it.” It’s also a way of stepping firmly into the next phase of her career, definitively leaving her college image behind. As someone known for her blonde pigtail braids on the court, she’s choosing to make a statement with these images. The word she uses is “spiritually evolved” from the player—and public figure—that she’s been in the past.
Her rise has been anything but conventional, but through these experiences, Van Lith has come out a dominant player and an empathetic leader with the ability to hold herself steady amidst the highs and the lows. “If you don't listen to hate,” says Van Lith, “you also can’t listen to the love.” The goal, she says, is to balance both. Part of that means learning to let people be wrong about you.
For years, Van Lith avoided speaking about herself, knowing that public perception was largely out of her control, but now she is at peace with that idea. “I don't feel the need to clear up things, because the world is too big for everybody to know the truth. I think I’m O.K. with things not always being crystal clear, because that’s just a never-ending battle that I probably won’t win,” she explains.
Just don’t call it a comeback. You’d be wrong about that.
Photography TAYLOR BALLANTYNE
Words XXXXX
Swimsuit by xxxxxx
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt
“I knew that there was going to be less limelight shown on us,” she says. “There was no expectation on us to be successful and I was fine with that. I’ve learned and experienced enough things to know that the attention or being viewed as one of the top programs, it doesn’t help you win games. So I just made my choice strictly off of vibes. And you know, it has paid off.”
Fast forward to this final college season, the Van Lith that showed up to play with TCU is the dog that’s always been there—she found a system that fit her style of play and leadership. She credits Horned Frogs coach Mark Campbell with restoring her belief in herself. “He had a vision of who I thought I could be,” she said following TCU’s loss in the Elite Eight. “At the beginning, he probably was convincing me that I could be that person. I wasn’t necessarily in a place where I knew who I was anymore.”
Van Lith is preparing to take the next step into the WNBA at a pivotal moment of growth. Last summer the league announced a monster 11-year media rights deal featuring partnerships with Disney, Amazon Prime Video and new rights holder NBCUniversal at a value of $2.2 billion. In 2024 WNBA viewership was up 170% from the previous season. An expansion team, the Golden State Valkyries, is joining the league, the first new franchise since 2008. Two more teams, in Toronto and Portland, are set to be added in 2026. A 16th franchise is likely to start play by 2028 with Cleveland the odds-on favorite to land the rights.
Swimsuit by LSPACE | Jeans by Dries Van Noten | Shoes by Givenchy