The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Chassion is living her childhood dream as a walk-on at UConn
Studying has never been an issue for Autumn Chassion. A prosperous student and aspiring doctor, Chassion has Ivy League smarts and the confidence to match.
“She’s been blessed with a gift from God,” her father, Tehmi, said. “The kid’s really, really, really smart, like really smart. I don’t think she’s ever made a B in her life.”
Chassion, a high school valedictorian, intends to further her education this fall at UConn, and is hoping to maintain a 4.0.
“That’s all I need to do,” Chassion said. “Take my classes, get my good grades, and prepare to study for the MCAT. That’s my plan.”
Well, that’s of her plan. The Louisiana native will also play basketball for the Huskies — but mostly on her own dime.
Chassion, a 5-foot-8 point guard from Lafayette Christian Academy, had offers from numerous low-level Division I schools. But she passed up all of them to fulfill a dream years in the making: suiting up for the 11-time national champion Huskies.
“It’s still a strange situation because this is a kid who had multiple scholarships, multiple,” Tehmi said. “Like you can go to school for free in Texas, you can go to school for free in Florida.”
“When I was given this opportunity, I knew it was something I needed to jump on immediately,”
said Chassion, who has been on campus for a few weeks now. “I’m super excited to be here, ready to work.”
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
It’s a roughly 1,500-mile drive from Lafayette to Storrs. But for the Chassions, the self-proclaimed “College Basketball Capital of the World” was a mere phone call away.
That, more or less, is how Chassion’s unlikely journey to UConn began. A simple phone call. A few years ago, Tehmi, an ambitious AAU coach and father, not to mention an admirer of Geno Auriemma, dialed the offices at Werth Champions Center to inquire about attending open practice.
Chloe Pavlech, a graduate assistant at the time, answered and passed along the available dates.
Tehmi told her, “We’ll take them all.”
Tehmi was — what else? — mesmerized by the first practice he saw. He soaked up everything he could and wound up modeling his offense after Auriemma’s.
When the opportunity presented itself again a year later, he brought along Autumn, who was entering ninth grade. They sat courtside as their favorite team went to work, occupying the seats from the Huskies’ Final Four appearances in New Orleans.
Autumn had followed the program since she was 7, watching games with her father, who still has close to a dozen games recorded. Yet nothing compared to seeing the Huskies in person.
“We’re watching that they practice harder than we’ve ever played our entire lives,” Tehmi said. “Obviously we’ve been doing something wrong.”
FORGING AHEAD
Relatively speaking, for all the good she did on the court — guiding Lafayette Christian Academy to four straight state championship games and three titles, in addition to averaging 15 points and 10 assists as a senior — Chassion didn’t generate a ton of interest on the recruiting trail. Some coaches questioned whether she was big enough to compete at the Division I level. There were overtures, but nothing that screamed “I’m committed!”
“Her frame has always been the smallest of the smallest, the skinniest of the skinniest of kids,” Tehmi said.
However, she maintained hope that somehow, someway she could find her way to Storrs. After all, the Huskies’ coaching staff had seen her play more than once on the AAU circuit.
Sometime in the spring — April or May, Tehmi doesn’t remember exactly when — Chassion’s dream, forged through persistence and determination, became a reality. She accepted an invitation to join the program as a walk-on.
“(UConn associate head coach) Chris Dailey, with her possibly being a walkon, reached out and called her more than Division I schools that would call and just check in and say Hi,” Tehmi said. “Dailey made her more of a priority than schools where she wouldn’t have to pay a dime.”
Chassion arrived on campus last month with one of the most heralded freshman classes in the country, a group that includes No. 1 overall recruit Paige Bueckers, Aaliyah Edwards, Piath Gabriel, Mir McLean and Nika Muhl. She’s currently sharing an apartment with junior Evina Westbrook and Muhl.
There are no promises, no guarantees of anything but a chance to learn from a Hall of Fame coach and compete. Still, Chassion — the Huskies’ first walk-on since Ansonia native Tierney Lawlor — is thinking big. She told reporters last month her goals are to win four national championships and crack the rotation on gamedays.
“Be an asset to the team,” she said. “Whatever Coach demands from me, that’s what I would like to do.”
“She’s going to go there and compete and bust her butt,” Tehmi said. “I told her, ‘Listen, you’re a walkon and you may start at the end of the bench. It’s your job to work. If you play a minute, that’s because you earned it.’ ”
Understandably, Auriemma is going to wait before jumping to any conclusions about what she can or can’t accomplish.
“Lots of kids say they want to be walk-ons, then after about three or four weeks of conditioning stuff we never see them again,” he said. “So hopefully Autumn’s the kind of kid that feels like, ‘Hey, this is what I want, this is what I aspired to when I left Louisiana, and I’m going to stick it out and do whatever the coaching staff wants me to do and earn my way onto the team.’
“In a short period of time, she’s done that. We’ll see where that takes her.”