There’s a new kid at Beverly Hills High this year, and his name suggests he’ll fit right in.
The Los Angeles school’s famed alumni list already includes Angelina Jolie and Nicolas Cage. Also, Lenny Kravitz. Carrie Fisher. Jamie Lee Curtis. Betty White. Even Lil’ Romeo, the rapper who also briefly played hoops at USC.
And, now arriving as a transfer from Los Angeles View Park High School, Chance Comanche.
“When people hear it, they say ‘That’s a superstar name,’” said Comanche, the four-star forward who committed last weekend to play for the Arizona Wildcats in 2014-15.
That’s exactly how his mother planned it.
The last name is about blood. Comanche’s father is a quarter Comanche, a quarter Chocktaw and half African-American, and he lives in New Orleans among a large extended Native American family that still carries the Comanche surname.
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The first name took a while to figure out, but eventually became a natural fit for Melissa McGee, Comanche’s half-Caucasian, half-African-American mother.
A women’s basketball standout at Long Beach State in the early 1990s who was initially recruited by Joan Bonvicini — the UA coach from 1991 to 2008 — McGee hurt her knee while playing professionally in Spain in 1995.
She returned home to recover and became pregnant while doing so, creating a decision to be made.
Having a baby, she reasoned, would greatly endanger her professional career. Maybe even end it, which it ultimately did.
So she …
“Took a chance on having him,” McGee said. “I didn’t know what to name him. I knew if I had him, I would give up my career. I was taking a chance at that stage in my life to do what I did.”
There were other, more minor, factors, too.
While she was rehabbing the knee, McGee took a liking to a television show called “Strange Luck.” The main character of that show was a freelance photographer who always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
His name? Chance Harper.
Even then, McGee wasn’t totally sold. She wanted to name the child “Jazz.” But her mom didn’t like that name, so much so that she went to an unusual extreme.
“She went out and got a cat named Jazzy, because she didn’t want me to name him ‘Jazz,’” McGee said. “She thought kids would tease him with that name.”
So Chance it was.
Chance Comanche.
“I always knew I was going to have a son and I knew he was going to be a basketball player,” McGee said. “So when I named him I was naming in him for a name that would be in lights.”
Chance Comanche: Now playing at Beverly Hills High. And, next season, at McKale Center.
