Valkyries guard Julie Vanloo made a surprise appearance in a Spaces chat on X, formerly Twitter, Wednesday night. In a clip shared on Reddit by several WNBA fans, Vanloo expresses her admiration for the Indiana Fever's Caitlin Clark.
"She was really just, like, a scoring threat," Vanloo said of going up against Clark during the 2024 season. "So our first game, I remember we was like, 'Okay, we're going to trap her.' We're gonna try to make her pass the ball."
"So, we lost the game," she continued. "She still had 30 on us, I think. And the second game, towards the season, she started to also even pass the ball more. Her game got so complete that we were like, 'All right, what are we doing now? Like, what's the plan? We gotta defend her passing, too, because she's making her whole team play amazing around her, too."
The Mystics first played the Fever on June 7, 2024. The Fever won the game 85-83, and Clark did indeed hit 30 points in front of a sold-out crowd of 20,000 fans — a feat she pulled off by in part by hitting seven 3-pointers, a career high.
Julie Vanloo joined the Golden State Valkyries in the Expansion Draft
Vanloo was drafted to the Valkyries during the December 2024 Expansion Draft. She started 34 of 40 games for the Mystics in 2024 during what was technically her rookie season — despite the fact that the 31-year-old has been playing overseas for years and was a major star during last year's Olympic Games.
Vanloo averaged 7.4 points per game for the Mystics, which isn't the strongest average but also is far from terrible. She showed her value in assists and led the team with 4.3 per game.
The vet brings a lot of experience with her, something the Valkyries will need, and she's considered the strongest guard the team currently has on the roster right now. The team made it clear that they want to keep Vanloo on board during free agency, when they extended her a reserved qualifying offer.
Since Vanloo only has one year in the WNBA under her belt, she was offered $66,079, and the terms of a reserved qualifying offer means she can only negotiate directly with the Valkyries. If Vanloo and the Valkyries didn't come to an agreement, the team will be able to retain her rights until they are traded or negotiated away in a deal with another team.