Kaitlyn Chen attended this month's WNBA Draft to support her UConn teammate Paige Bueckers — and because it was the next logical step in her career. But Chen didn't necessarily head into the night believing she would hear her name called, her former high school coach Jayme Chan told CT Insider.
"She was genuinely surprised, like, she entered the draft kind of out of, like, ‘That's the next step of what I should do.’ But she was genuinely surprised," Chan explained. The coach also said that this kind of humility is characteristic of Chen, who is the type of person who supports others to the max but hasn't always believed in herself as much as she should have.
“I think Kaitlyn surprised herself along the way, because she is so humble, like the people around her know who she is, but she's just doing her thing, and she's not really measuring that,” Chan also said. “… I think all along the way, you know, she was just on this journey of just trying to be her best, and this is what it amounted to.”
Kaitlyn Chen is a true trailblazer
Chan and Chen's former coach Kevin Kiyomura would ask all their players what their goals in basketball were. For Chen, the WNBA didn't come up until Chan asked her directly — despite the fact that she the captain at Flintridge Prep for three years in a row, a McDonald's All-American nominee, and helped lead Princeton to the Ivy championships.
Part of the problem might have been that it was difficult for Chen to imagine herself in the WNBA when no one else in the league looks like her, Chan explained. Chen is the first person of Taiwanese descent to be drafted into the WNBA; her parents Sandy Shien and Yeh-Ching Chen are from the country and raised their family in San Marino, California. There have been 12 players of Asian descent drafted into the WNBA — and Chen is number 13. Han Xu was the youngest when the New York Liberty picked her up at age 19.
Being drafted by the Valkyries is also impactful for Chen because Coach Natalie Nakase was honored by former President Barack Obama in 2013. Nakase, who is a third-generation Japanese-American, was the first Asian American to play in the National Women's Basketball League (an offseason professional league in the United States) in 2003. She joined the league's San Jose Spiders before moving on to the San Diego Siege.
Kaitlyn Chen's time at UConn shows she's tough
Despite her humble disposition, Chen was a trailblazer well before this year's draft. She was scouted by Geno Auriemma while still at Princeton and approached about spending her graduate season in Storrs. The move forced her to pivot nearly immediately to a different kind of role, and Chen went from being a leader at Princeton to being the person who made sure her teammates at UConn — Bueckers, Sarah Strong, and Azzi Fudd — were set up to get the buckets they and the team needed.
Chen did it all without missing a beat and without expressing any negativity. In fact, she fulfilled her role at UConn perfectly, and that's something she can do for Golden State if the team has a roster spot for her. No matter what the future holds for Kaitlyn Chen, what she's doing now is powerful work that matters, and that is essential and important.