by Knight Ridder News Service
To his legions of fans, he is Chubby Checker.
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To the women of Duke University’s basketball team, and other friends, he is known by his given name, Ernest Evans.
But to the Blue Devils’ starting post player, freshman Mistie Bass, he is plain old “Dad.”
To be sure, Chubby Checker has been a “long-distance” dad, dispensing his fatherly advice by phone to Bass as she grew into womanhood as one of the nation’s best young female basketball players.
Today, he resides in Philadelphia, where he made a huge name for himself as the king of “Twist,” the dance craze that swept the nation in the 1960s.
Mistie lives in Janesville, Wis., with her mother, Pam Bass when not in Durham, N.C., attending college.
Somehow, the relationship survived, and now that Bass is playing for the No. 2 ranked women’s program in the nation, it is, well, thriving.
Checker wasn’t on hand for the battle of unbeatens in Durham on Saturday night when the Blue Devils fell to the defending national champion University of Connecticut, but he will be there in spirit.
He has already made the 1,000-mile round trip between Philadelphia and Durham three times this winter to watch his daughter play basketball. That’s three times more than he saw her play at Janesville Parker High School, but neither father nor daughter is bitter about missed opportunities past.
“It’s always been a good relationship and I give my mom full credit for that,” Mistie said. “She made sure I had a good relationship with him.
“It was always ‘Call your dad,’ or ‘I think it’s about time for you to visit your dad again.’” Even though he was in Philadelphia and I was in Janesville, he basically shared parenting with my mom.
“You could say he raised me by phone. He called me almost every day…it wasn’t even unusual for him to call me up and get me out of bed in the morning. He did the best he could under the circumstances.”
Apparently, Checker has no regrets regarding his long-distance relationship with his daughter, either. He has six other children that he hasn’t spent as much time with as he would have liked, chalking that up to leading the life of an entertainer.
“Mistie has six brothers and sisters and I’m not around them that often, either,” said Checker, when reached in Las Vegas, where he is currently playing a gig at the Aladdin Resort.
“That’s my life, I’m on the road quite a bit, but I think I’ve given Mistie quite a lot of good advice over the phone.”
Making connections
The two still talk almost daily by phone, but Bass’ decision to go east to Duke has brought them closer together than ever. After an intense recruiting battle, Bass chose Duke over Wisconsin, Tennessee and Rutgers, not necessarily to be closer to her father, but that’s the effect it has had.
Checker never played basketball and freely admits he is only a marginal sports fan, but he seems to live for trips to Durham to watch Bass play basketball.
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“I’m getting to know that stretch of road pretty well,” he said. “And it’s worth every mile of it.
“I leave Philadelphia about 11, get to Durham in time for their game at 7, and after the game, Mistie and I go out to eat at the local Cracker Barrel. When we get together, we are like two nutty people, we just enjoy being around each other so much.”
Admittedly never a basketball fan, Evans is acquiring a taste for the game.
“I always wondered what is the big attraction for people when they watch basketball,” he said. “I could never understand why they got so excited.
“But every time I go to one of her games, my heart is in my mouth . . . it’s so exciting. It’s very emotional and probably not very good for my heart. Even when they are behind, they always seem to pull it out at the end.”
The Blue Devils, who are 20-1, haven’t had to come from behind that often this season. Bass, a 6-foot-3 freshman, has been no small part of the equation, providing the last piece of the Blue Devils’ puzzle: A post presence.
Duke coach Gail Goestenkors called Bass into her office on Dec. 2, Bass’ birthday, and told the freshman she would be starting the next game for the Blue Devils. Bass has been in the starting lineup ever since, averaging 8.6 points and 4.0 rebounds.
“For Mistie to be making the kind of impact she’s making on a great team says a lot about who she is and how determined she is,” Goestenkors said.
By any measure, Bass is the best female basketball player Wisconsin has ever produced. She was the state’s player of the year her final three years at Parker and led her squad to state titles in her sophomore and junior seasons.
In spite of her high school accolades, Bass sometimes needs to pinch herself to make sure she isn’t dreaming her meteoric rise to starting on the nation’s No. 1 college team.
She’s blessed
“Sometimes I still can’t believe it’s happening,” she said. “I’ve just been unbelievably blessed. But I know I’ve still got a long ways to go _ the tempo of the game in college is so much faster, there is just so much to learn.”
But if anyone is up to making the transition, it is Bass, who is as proficient in the classroom as she is on the basketball court.
“Mistie is a coach’s dream,” Goestenkors said. “She has a great attitude and a tremendous work ethic.”
Chubby Checker believes he knows where Bass obtained her work ethic.
“My dad never sugarcoated things and I don’t sugarcoat things either,” he said. “I was a man by the time I was 13, working a job and buying my own food.
“I think I put that work ethic into Mistie at a very young age. When she was about 8, I told her she should get a job delivering newspapers and lo and behold, the next day I get a report that Mistie is up at 5 in the morning out delivering newspapers.
“Then and there I knew she was a chip off the old block. Even if she wasn’t my child, Mistie is someone I would respect.”
Advice from dad
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Even though he is no basketball guru, Evans doesn’t hold back when it comes to dispensing basketball advice, albeit of a generic nature, to his daughter.
“I tell her to look at the tapes of the great players like Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, men who played the same position she plays,” Evans said. “Do what other successful people have done (and) stay focused.
“I tell her to earn the love of her team, be the complete entity no matter who you are in life.”
Bass listens to her father’s basketball advice, even though, she admits, with a grain of salt.
“He tells me I need to work on this shot or that shot,” Bass said. “But it’s funny because he never played the game and doesn’t know a lot about it. He’ll tell me something like I need to work on my three-point shot but he means my jump shot.
“Some people don’t want to listen to their parents, but I listen to what he says, especially for the morals of it. He says `take God with you every time you take the court,’ and I do.”
Ernest Evans, a.k.a. Chubby Checker, never could have foreseen himself as a basketball parent, but now that it has happened, he seems to have found a comfort zone at Duke. Initially, his presence caused quite a stir at the games, but now he has settled into being just another parent.
“The first time he showed up, all the players wanted to meet him,” Bass said. “It was Mr. Evans this, Mr. Evans that. Everybody loves you. But now he’s just like every other parent. It’s no big deal.”
Checker agrees: “I try to stay quiet and just watch the game, but every once in a while, someone approaches me during the game. I feel like saying, `get out of my face, I’m here for Mistie,’ but I can’t do that.
“Like I’ve always told Mistie, don’t be high-minded, be touchable, be approachable, so I have to do the same myself.
“But Mistie definitely chose the right school. It’s more than a team, it’s a family and the coaches really nurture every player.
“It’s just a fabulous situation for her to be in.”
The relationship between Bass and Checker has grown stronger with each passing year and as a symbol of his love for his daughter, he presented her with a Mercedes-Benz SUV when she graduated from Parker High. But anyone who thinks that he only entered Bass’ life when she became a highly recruited basketball player would be sorely mistaken.
Mistie in his heart
“I wish I could have been there all the time, but I did my best,” Checker said. “But Mistie’s always been in my heart. She knows that.”
Indeed she does.
“It’s not like this is something new,” Bass said. “We’ve always had a strong relationship.
“It wasn’t like I picked Duke to be closer to him, but that’s the way it worked out. It’s just made us that much closer.
“And that’s a good thing.”
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