I traveled nearly 40,000 miles covering the Indiana Fever. Here’s what I learned.

INDIANAPOLIS — After traveling over 37,000 miles across the country, from the WNBA draft in New York to the All-Star Game in Phoenix, 20 away games and the playoffs in Connecticut, my five-month adventure following the Indiana Fever’s 2024 season has come to an end.

It was a new experience for me; this was my second year covering the Fever, but the first where I traveled for it. Where I saw the constant sold out crowds, the seemingly near-always home games for the Fever, and their much-improved record firsthand.

First off, I have no idea how the players managed to take commercial flights for the first 26 years of the league’s existence. With flights at the crack of dawn, delays and cancellations, I thought at some points I would barely have the energy to sit at the press table and watch the game — much less play 40 full minutes.

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(Shoutout to the Denver airport, where I spent seven hours after my flight to Los Angeles was canceled because of an air conditioning issue and I failed to get on two other flights on standby before getting out on the last flight of the night.)

(Another shoutout to my flight from LA to Las Vegas, where we couldn’t land and had to circle the airport because someone refused to get out of the bathroom.)

What those commercial flights showed to me was how overdue a charter system was for these athletes.

Don’t get me wrong: I am very lucky to have had the opportunity to travel across the country and cover the Fever for a living. Very few league beat reporters are able to cover every game in person as I was, and I went to cities I’ve never been before, saw different landmarks for the first time and visited every WNBA arena.

I got to see records fall and great games flourish; like when the Fever picked up their first win of the season in Los Angeles after starting 0-5; when Caitlin Clark dropped a single-game league record 19 assists in Dallas before the Olympic break or when Kelsey Mitchell spurred the Fever to a win in Dallas with 36 points, extending her franchise-record of games 20 points or more, in their second trip following the break.

I also saw some low-points of the Fever’s season: including when Clark ruptured her eardrum and Aliyah Boston suffered an ankle injury in the 36-point loss to the Liberty in New York near the beginning of the season.

Being able to travel with the Fever also showed me crucial updates behind the scenes. When Mitchell went down with an injury in the final game of the Fever’s regular season in Washington D.C., I watched as she went to the locker room, then returned to the bench wearing a knee brace. I saw she quickly shedded that brace, then jokingly tried to check back into the game as she was laughing with her teammates.

It was early confirmation her injury wasn’t severe; they kept her out of the game because of a precaution. It was also something I would not have been able to track if I was watching on TV, which followed the flow of the game (and obviously didn’t have a camera aimed on Indiana’s bench).

While the Fever did travel to 20 away games, it felt like a lot of them were just home games in a different arena. Los Angeles and Washington D.C. specifically stood out as games that were Fever-centric. The two locations that felt like more true away games came in Chicago and in Connecticut during the playoff series — even in those games, though, there were loud cheers for any Clark or Fever basket.

The Fever are starting a new era. One that, with the right pieces, practice and experience, will likely bring them a lot of success. In the near future, Indiana could be a force to be reckoned with in the WNBA, and I’ve been fortunate to document the start of that journey — in Indianapolis and on the road.

Follow IndyStar Fever Insider Chloe Peterson on X at @chloepeterson67.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyStar’s Chloe Peterson covered Caitlin Clark, Fever every game.