How Lexie Hull learned to turn setbacks into strength

Lexie Hull is certainly no stranger to standing up to adversity. From having to go from playing at Stanford with her twin sister Lacie to adjusting to the WNBA alone in 2022, to battling through the roller coaster that was the 2025 season for her Indiana Fever, Hull has had no choice but to learn how to bounce back from her challenges. And her resilience hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Hull was one of the people recognized among the 2025 Glamour Women of the Year, alongside four other WNBA stars. In her cover interview with the magazine, Hull revealed many of her thoughts throughout her relatively young career and how she was able to overcome her most difficult moments, starting with her rookie year in the W.

“There were times when I started that it was like, ‘If I shoot, it needs to go in because otherwise I might get benched or I might get cut,'” Hull explained. “There’s real nerves there in the first couple [of] years where I’m playing on a losing team, we’re not doing well, we are not making [the] playoffs. Every little thing matters.”

Over time, Hull admits she found confidence in her game and ability to contribute to her squad, especially due to the Fever’s turnaround following Caitlin Clark’s arrival in 2024.

“I know I’m going to get open shots. I don’t need to be worried about whether they go in or they don’t because I’ve put in the work to set myself up for this, and I’ll live with the outcome,” Hull said.

That doesn’t mean the challenges she faced with the Fever stopped, however. Near the end of the 2025 WNBA regular season, Hull took an accidental elbow to the face against the Minnesota Lynx, and just one game later, she crashed headfirst into the Seattle Storm’s Gabby Williams, resulting in two black eyes that attracted a ton of public attention.

“I keep telling people I looked worse than I felt,” Hull answered with a smile. “I have played through a lot worse than [the black eyes], so I don’t think I would’ve taken the game off even if we had a fully healthy team. I think I’d still want to be like, ‘Put me out there.'”

A week after those incidents, Hull was mistakenly hit in the face versus the Chicago Sky, leaving her with a bloody lip. But Hull seemingly didn’t mind taking hit after hit against an intense level of competition as the Fever fought to clinch their sixth-seed playoff spot.

“I will put my body on the line, and I will try everything. I will stand up for whoever,” Hull said. “As competitors, that’s just what you do when you show up — whoever’s on your side of the line, that’s who you fight for.”

Hull also doesn’t seem to mind that other teams around the WNBA have begun to play harder against the Fever in light of the media focus they receive due to Clark’s presence.

“If you have extra motivation to beat us because of something out of our control, that’s fine if that’s what it takes for you guys to come and try extra hard. I think a little bit of that is needed across the league,” Hull said. “Everyone should feel like they’re getting everyone else’s best, and I do feel like we get everyone else’s best.”

However, Hull made sure to note that the aggression the players bring to the court stays on the court.

“You can be part of something and everyone not like each other. We can support each other while also having rivalries,” Hull explained. “Playing with both [Clark on the Fever and Angel Reese in Unrivaled] — playing with every player — everyone’s a good person. I think that’s what fans don’t see all the time, that these people aren’t just cussing at the refs, pushing people down. That’s not who they are off the court, and people need to know that.”

Hull also spoke up against the increase in hate speech that many WNBA players have been getting over the past couple of years, denouncing any excuses people may come up with to justify their vitriol.

“I think that you can be supportive of people, and I think you can have your favorite players, but I don’t think there’s room to degrade people or speak in a way that is disrespectful. That’s over the line,” Hull adds.

Overall, though, Hull has taken every hurdle thrown her way in stride. She revealed one of the biggest challenges for her and the Fever to overcome this season involved now-Phoenix Mercury star DeWanna Bonner, who joined Indiana in the offseason before abruptly leaving shortly after the 2025 campaign started.

“I was super, super, super excited because finally there’s a [player in my position] that I can look up to that has won in the league and has all these accomplishments and knows what it takes, and I can learn something from her,” Hull said about Bonner’s presence.

But when the season didn’t go as planned, Hull said that the Fever used the disappointment in their favor and banded together to face their uphill battle.

“And then she randomly leaves, and we’re all just kind of like, ‘What happened?’ We were never given an explanation,” Hell said. “To have no explanation was really challenging, but I think that helped us grow closer together because we’re like, ‘All right, this is us. We’re here. We’re going to support each other. We’re loving each other. We’re going to fight for each other. We’re not going to leave. We’re in this together.”

The Fever may not have ended up with the 2025 WNBA title, but they did shock the women’s basketball world with their Cinderella run in the playoffs. Indiana upset the Atlanta Dream in Round 1 and took the eventual champion Las Vegas Aces to the semifinal round’s decisive Game 5 before reluctantly bowing out in overtime.

With an offseason for the Fever to fully recover from their injury woes and a growth in unbridled confidence, Hull can bring her “ride or die” energy back to the court in the 2026 WNBA campaign, knowing she’s prepared for any obstacles that may arise.