Ashley Chea was still in high school the first time one of her highlights went viral. Late in the third quarter of a California state playoff game, Chea rocked the defense to sleep with a series of between-the-legs dribbles, then pulled up for a 3-pointer. She was already staring at the Flintridge Prep student section when the ball fell through the net, just before the buzzer sounded.
Chea wasn’t even trying to make a statement — “In the moment, I honestly had no idea that the ball was going to go in,” she said — but her game did it for her.
“I was really frustrated and I’m an emotional player and I showed that a lot in high school,” Chea said. “So I was upset that something happened with me and my teammate. I shot the ball then I turned around and everyone started cheering, so I was like ‘Oh my gosh, it probably went in,’ so then I did that little twirl.”
Now a sophomore at Princeton and an All-Ivy League honoree, Chea has made the jump from little screens to the big screen in Home Court, a feature-length documentary directed by Erica Tanamachi. The award-winning film will make its broadcast premiere on PBS on March 24.
Home Court opens with Chea dribbling and shooting in a park at night, interspersed with home video footage of her as a child doing the same.
“When I play basketball, I feel like there’s nothing around me that can stop me,” Chea says in a voiceover. “Like if a meteor came and flew into the gym, that won’t stop me from playing basketball. It’s like my safe space.”
Over the next 84 minutes, the film follows Chea from gym to gym. From the PCL tear that cost her her sophomore season to Flintridge Prep’s state tournament run in her senior year and her decision to go to Princeton, Home Court captures the ups and downs of being a high school star while exploring themes of immigration, race and class through the story of her family.
Chea’s mother, Lida, and father, Baov, arrived in America in the 1990s as refugees from Cambodia, where their families had suffered under the Khmer Rouge — Chea’s grandmother once had to escape the regime’s soldiers on a bicycle. Chea, who did not realize that her family was going to be such a big part of the documentary, said she was “naive” about everything they faced, but she now wants to learn more about her history.
Chea’s basketball journey began by accompanying her dad to his rec league games. She would spend hours with him every night, watching and learning before picking up a ball herself. In the film, she recalls making the second shot she ever took: “I told myself, ‘This sport is so easy, I don’t even know why people think it’s so hard.'”
The game may have come easier to Chea than most, but she also trained with Baov on a nightly basis, going through drills and copying moves she studied on YouTube. Eventually, she was invited to join a club team by someone who saw her shooting at halftime of one of her dad’s games. The time she spent with her dad through basketball paid off, but it came with a cost: less time with her mom, which contributed to their strained relationship, one of the film’s throughlines.
While Chea said she didn’t realize she was better than most kids until high school, others noticed earlier. Flintridge Prep coach Jayme Kiyomura Chan recalled seeing Chea play at a club tournament when she was still in middle school. “They threw the ball up and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this kid is unbelievable,'” Kiyomura Chan said. “She has a jump shot and she’s 13 years old. Like a boy’s jump shot. Right then and there, we knew that she was gonna be really special.”
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Kiyomura Chan was so convinced that she nearly got fired for advocating so hard for Chea to be accepted into Flintridge Prep. “I basically called and terrorized them every day,” she said. As much as she wanted to coach Chea, she also knew the long-lasting impact that a school like Flintridge Prep, where tuition runs close to $50,000 per year, could have.
“I made a plea that if we invest in this family, we’re gonna change an entire family’s educational path for generations to come with this one child,” Kiyomura Chan says early in the film.
Over Chea’s four years at Flintridge Prep, Kiyomura Chan became extremely close with her and her family, a relationship that continues to this day. Kiyomura Chan joked that she spends more money flying to Princeton to watch Chea play than she does on vacations.
“She was there for me whenever I needed her to be,” Chea said, adding that Kiyomura Chan was “like a mom for me.” Kiyomura Chan is uncomfortable with that characterization, but she would take Chea to doctor’s appointments, help with applications and liaise with her teachers. At times, Chea would even spend nights at Kiyomura Chan’s house when her parents were too busy with work or raising her little brother, Ethan, to pick her up.
During Chea’s freshman year, Tanamachi contacted Kiyomura Chan, initially only as a “connector,” because she wanted to make a film about Asian-American basketball. After a few phone calls, there were some initial conversations to feature Kaitlyn Chen, who also went to Flintridge Prep and then later to Princeton before transferring to UConn this season. But when Kiyomura Chan told Tanamachi about Chea and her family, that became the story.
“In the beginning, I thought that having a camera crew with me 24/7 would be the coolest thing ever,” Chea said. “But super quickly I realized how annoying it was and I kinda wanted to do everything to have them not film me.”
Chea admits to being “super cringed out” when she watched the first cut because of how she saw herself on screen. “I think that I carried myself in a way that I don’t think that I should have,” Chea said.
Who wouldn’t feel embarrassed by watching footage of themselves in high school? To most viewers, though, Chea comes off as “a young teenager being a young teenager,” as Princeton coach Carla Berube put it. Berube added, “She’s an unbelievable kid and we’re so lucky to have her.”
While Home Court is still a “hard watch” for Chea, she said she’s proud of how she matured along the way and has “grown up” even more in college. The yearslong filming process wasn’t always easy, but it was worthwhile. Already, young girls are flocking to her games, both at Princeton and on the road.
“I wanted to be that role model for people that are just like me and didn’t have people to look up to,” Chea said. “There aren’t a lot of Asian Americans in college playing any sport, really. It was super cool knowing that, me coming to Princeton, other people would see that and they could be inspired by it.”
Before the film airs, Chea hopes to lead Princeton to a fourth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance, which would tie a program record. The Tigers (21-6) are the No. 2 seed in the Ivy League Women’s Basketball Tournament and right on the bubble for the Big Dance. CBS Sports bracketologist Connor Groel has them as the one of the last four teams in.
Ivy Madness begins on Friday with the semifinals, in which Princeton will take on Harvard. The Tigers have already beaten the Crimson — another bubble team — twice this season, with one of those wins coming on a Chea buzzer-beater.
“I think we’ve put together a great season, a great resume, so we’ll see,” Berube said. “It would be great to get a few more wins. It would be great to be the auto qualifier and not worry about being on the bubble, but I think we’re playing some great basketball right now.”
If the Tigers are to get in, either by winning the Ivy League Tournament or as an at-large selection, it will be thanks in large part to Chea, who has played more minutes (896), scored more points (334), dished out more assists (97) and made more 3-pointers (54) than anyone else on the team.
Whatever happens between now and Selection Sunday, in some ways Chea has already won.
“For Ashley, the whole goal of bringing her to Flintridge Prep was to give her a very full experience and to open her eyes to a world that might not have been attainable for her anywhere else,” Kiyomura Chan said. “Her growth has been tremendous … every time I talk to her she is just so much wiser and so much more worldly and empathetic. She’s an even better human and teammate now.”