This SoCal gym keeps minting Asian American women point guards

Ashley Chea scored 14 at Pauley Pavilion in March and still went home a loser. Oklahoma State beat Princeton 82-68 in the NCAA Tournament’s first round. For Chea, who grew up in Los Angeles and learned the game at Flintridge Prep in the hills above Pasadena, it was a homecoming that ended early — and another night that traced back to the same high-school gym.

Flintridge Preparatory School sits in La Cañada Flintridge, above Pasadena. Co-head coaches Jayme Kiyomura-Chan and her cousin Kevin Kiyomura have won two CIF Southern Section titles there, stacked Prep League banners, and, by Kiyomura-Chan’s count in her 14th season, sit around 303-60. She also sits on the board of the Yonsei Basketball Association, the Japanese American youth exchange rooted in Southern California’s community leagues. Kids who come through that gym already treat Asian American basketball as normal before a Power Five coach returns a call.

Kaitlyn Chen came through first. Taiwanese American, from San Marino, she left Flintridge with the school’s career marks in points, rebounds, and assists — more than 2,000 points. At Princeton she was Ivy League Player of the Year in 2023 and the Ivy Tournament’s most outstanding player three years running. Her graduate season at UConn ended with a national title and a start in all 40 games.

The Golden State Valkyries drafted her 30th overall, the first player of Taiwanese descent taken by a WNBA team, and put her with Natalie Nakase, the league’s first Asian American head coach. Chen got waived, came back on a hardship deal, and fought her way onto the sheet again. Rookie life is brutal for third-rounders. A Flintridge kid in Valkyrie black is still rare enough to notice.

Chea overlapped with Chen for one year at Flintridge, followed her to Princeton, and sat behind her again. When Chen left for Storrs, Chea took the ball. Carla Berube wanted a floor general who could shoot; Chea is the better three-point threat of the two. She was a unanimous First-Team All-Ivy pick in 2024-25, started nearly every night last season, made the Ivy All-Tournament team, and hit four threes in that Pauley loss.

PBS’s Home Court had already spent high school following her Cambodian American family — parents Baov and Lida, refugees whose families survived the Khmer Rouge — through recruitment and injury. The cameras have moved on. Chea has eligibility left.

October 2024 NCAA data counted 80 Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander athletes among 5,048 Division I women’s basketball players, about 1.6%. Two point guards from one La Cañada gym will not fix that. They do show how a kid gets past it: a coach who grew up in Pasadena’s Asian American basketball world keeps putting them on the floor, and the next one can see the chair already taken.

Recruiting still mostly skips that kid. Watch lists run through the same club circuits. Body types get sorted early. Ivy League ball gave Chen and Chea titles, March games, and national TV without waiting on a Power Five scholarship that might never come. Chen’s portal year at UConn raised her ceiling. Chea keeping the Princeton job means the chair did not go empty when one Asian American point guard left.

Chen wears Valkyrie black now. Chea is still in Princeton orange. Somewhere else in Southern California, another teenager is learning those sets on a phone — and the person running them already looks like someone she could become.