In a little more than a week, former BYU basketball superstar AJ Dybantsa will begin searching for a place to live next, depending on which NBA team selects him in Tuesday’s draft.
Will it be in Washington, D.C., home of the No. 1 pick-holding Wizards?
Will it be in Salt Lake City, about 40 minutes away from his current living quarters in Provo, where the Utah Jazz have the No. 2 pick?
“I could not care less. I just want to be the No. 1 pick.”
— AJ Dybantsa on his preferred NBA destination
Wherever it is, one thing is certain: Dybantsa’s family will be right there with him, particularly his father, Anicet “Ace” Dybantsa Sr., and his mother, Chelsea Hudson Dybantsa.
“I could not care less,” AJ told the Deseret News on May 29 when he was asked which NBA franchise and city would be his preference to play for and in. “I just want to be the No. 1 pick.”
A day before that, Ace Dybantsa had echoed the same sentiments, while adding this prediction: “It doesn’t matter to us; we will be living with him, or near him, at his request.”
That’s illustrative of how tight the bond is between father and son, and how involved in AJ’s life and basketball career Ace has been, is, and plans to be.
“It’s my full-time job,” said Ace, a former campus police officer at Boston University near the family’s hometown of Brockton, Massachusetts. “I ‘retired’ two years ago to do this. AJ told us two years ago, ‘I don’t want to live alone when I turn pro.’ I said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, as long as you get us an in-law (apartment), so you can have your privacy, yeah, we will be there.’”
Who is Ace Dybantsa?
Anybody who has spent even 15 minutes around AJ knows the 6-foot-4, 59-year-old former junior college soccer goalie with the diamond earrings, the gleaming bald head, the impeccable sense for fashion (when he’s not decked out in BYU-logo sweats) and the unwavering management of his son, a basketball prodigy going on a decade now.
“He’s done a good job of just being there, making a lot of sacrifices, obviously, since Day 1, just taking me to practices, games, camps, all that,” AJ said. “I’ve traveled around the world with him. He’s my full-time manager. Most of all, he’s super strict and straightforward. He just tells me the truth. Doesn’t sugarcoat anything.”
Says Chelsea, AJ’s mother: “I would say Ace is the hardest-working man I have ever met. He is all about family and making sure he is taking care of his family. He is very dedicated, loves the kids. He pushes the kids in education, and also in sports. That’s who he is and what he’s all about.”
The parents have not just been successful with AJ, which has been well documented. Their oldest daughter, 22-year-old Samarra, just graduated from UMass-Boston with a degree in psychology and is headed to graduate school. Their third child, 17-year-old Jasmyn, is a standout volleyball player at Lone Peak High in Alpine, Utah, and plans to return to the Utah prep sports powerhouse this fall for her senior year.
Featuring Ace Dybantsa before Father’s Day
Every June, the Deseret News profiles a father in the Utah sports community, a dad who has either produced and reared an impactful person in the Utah sports community, or is one himself.
Ace Dybantsa is the Deseret News’ unofficial Utah Sports Father of the Year in 2026, joining the likes of other fathers we’ve featured in past years before Father’s Day, men such as former Utah and Utah State men’s basketball coach Craig Smith, Draper’s Mike Wilson (father of Zach, Whitney, Josh, Micah, Sophie and Isaac), Tom Sitake (father of Kalani) and Ferrell Hill, father of former BYU defensive coordinator Jay Hill, who is now at Michigan.
Last year, our choice was BYU basketball coach Kevin Young, who said during our interview in June 2025 that his own father (Phil Young), BYU assistant Chris Burgess or Ace Dybantsa would make a good candidate in 2026.
So here we are, honoring the proud father of three who will be joined in the “Green Room” of the NBA draft on Tuesday, June 23, by AJ, Chelsea, Samarra, Jasmyn and the people AJ calls his godparents although he is not related to them, “Auntie Danielle and Uncle Dexter.”
With the exception of Samarra, who stayed in Boston to finish her schooling, the Dybantsas have lived in Utah the past two years, the first year in Hurricane while AJ attended and played for Utah Prep, and the second one in north Utah County as AJ became a consensus All-American and National Player of the Year candidate.
“Had to take care of this 6-foot-9 kid of mine,” Ace said, displaying his wry sense of humor. “Someone has got to take care of him. I can’t even add up (the number of hours a week he spends on matters relating to his son). I am dead serious. I am his dad, I am his manager, I am his security, I am his disciplinarian. I am everything.”
‘AJ’s not my friend’ — Ace Dybantsa
AJ had his own place near BYU this past year, but says he “never went a single day” without talking to his father. Do they ever argue?
“Yeah, we disagree about some stuff, but it is never really like, super, super, super crazy,” AJ said. “I’m just trying to make him proud.”
Consider that goal accomplished, although Ace continues to practice “tough love,” in the words of teenage daughter Jasmyn, and is harder on AJ and more truthful regarding his basketball progress than anybody, including BYU head coach Kevin Young. Young is biggest reason why AJ picked BYU over the likes of Duke, North Carolina, Kansas and Kentucky coming out of high school.
What was Ace’s strictest rule?
“Too many to pick from, really,” said AJ, who hopes to get married and be a father himself someday. “I can’t really give you just one.”
Regarding their relationship, Ace bristles when it is suggested that they are best friends because they spend so much time together.
“No, no, no. He’s not my best friend,” Ace said, adamantly. “Some people see it like that. He’s not my friend. I’m his dad. Please get that straight. I tell him stuff, difficult stuff, that most people don’t tell him. Why? Because I’m not his friend, plain and simple.”
What is the secret to being a good father?
“Hard work, and discipline,” Ace said. “There’s not a secret. From the day they are born, you have to instill hard work, discipline, accountability and respect.”
Speaking of hard work, that includes working at home. The family home has always included a “chore chart,” Ace said, and AJ has always been on it.
From Republic of Congo, to France, to Boston, to Provo
As was chronicled in November 2025 by the Deseret News, Ace was born in the Republic of Congo, then sent by his father, Joachim, to France to live with his brother when he was 13 so he could get a better education. In 1989, he moved to Boston and played soccer for Massasoit College in Massachusetts before meeting Chelsea Hudson, who had also left her birth country when she was 13, having lived in Hanover, Jamaica, with her grandmother.
Ace and Chelsea started talking about having kids — three kids, exactly — before they were married. “I always knew I was going to be a father, and wanted to be a father,” Ace said. “My own dad passed away in 1992, 34 years ago. I remember everything he taught me.”
Those teachings included respecting one’s elders, never talking back to them and being disciplined in school, sports, church or whatever. Ace calls himself a Catholic; Chelsea describes herself as a Christian.
“Where I’m from, if you acted up in front of your dad, you got your (rear end) whupped,” Ace said. “You got the belt. You can’t do that here in America, but there is no such thing as child abuse back in the Congo.”
Besides watching and participating in sports, or heading out to Water Country, a water park in New Hampshire, or to Disney World in Orlando, or traveling around the globe, the family doesn’t do a lot together, according to Samarra. She said AJ’s rise to prominence has meant they aren’t together as often as they would like, but when they are, “we make the most of it.”
“We do sports all the time,” Ace said. “We don’t play cards or board games. I am working all the time, wheeling and dealing, taking calls, attending meetings. I don’t have time to play.”
After BYU’s season ended in mid-March with an NCAA Tournament first-round loss to Texas, AJ and Ace lived in Los Angeles beginning April 10 and participated in predraft workouts and flew to the NBA combine in Chicago for a few days. The family reunited in Boston the last weekend in May for Samarra’s graduation, then AJ and Ace flew to Paris to watch the French Open and other events, and to conduct more business with AJ’s “partners” — Red Bull, Nike, Fanatics and others.
AJ counts American tennis star Frances Tiafoe Jr. among his many famous friends, and Ace had a meeting planned with Candi and Corey Gauff — parents of 2023 U.S. Open and 2025 French Open champion Coco Gauff.
AJ’s sisters are his biggest fans
Ace Dybantsa acknowledges that one of the tough aspects of his two-year managing of AJ’s career is that he doesn’t get to spend enough time with Samarra and Jasmyn. As Father’s Day approached, he said he’s “not a big materialist” and that a simple hug from each of his children will suffice, along with the usual homemade card.
When he’s not grinding through a basketball season, AJ “likes to sleep, or watch film,” Ace said. “When the whole family is there, he loves to hang out with his sisters. They are his best friends. That’s what you dream about for your kids. You hope they get along.”
Ace isn’t the type of father who jokes around a lot, or tells dad jokes, AJ says, noting that every once in a while something funny will “pop up” on his social media feeds and he will share it with whoever is around.
“He assumes he is funny, but he’s not that funny,” AJ said.
Ace Dybantsa’s daughters on his discipline
Protective and strict. That’s how Samarra describes her father, and moments later Jasmyn chooses those exact same words. Then, when asked for an example, Jasmyn notes that her dad will take away her cellphone at times, or make them exercise.
“He made us do pushups every day for like 10 years,” Jasmyn said. “There’s a space between our kitchen and living room, and there is a camera pointing right at it, and we had to do 100 pushups. That was our routine — every day.”
Jasmyn remembers Ace teaching his daughters self-defense techniques, which is what she means when she says he is protective.
“He always told us to stand our ground and not be weak,” she said.
Occasionally, Ace will let his guard down, she said, like the time the family went to Disney World and Ace “went on all the roller coasters,” including Space Mountain.
“So that was fun,” she said.
Jasmyn is listed as a 6-foot middle blocker on Lone Peak’s volleyball roster.
Samarra said that while Ace “maybe sometimes was a little too strict,” she understood it was “just out of the love in his heart.”
She ran track in high school, but didn’t take it as seriously as AJ took basketball, and hung up her running shoes when she enrolled in college, and he was named the Massachusetts Boys Basketball Gatorade Player of the Year after his freshman season at St. Sebastian’s School in Needham.
AJ’s mom weighs in
Chelsea Dybantsa is obviously proud of what AJ has accomplished in basketball, but she is even more proud of the way he embraced the unique culture at BYU — which is supported by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and continued to flourish in the classroom.
“That acceptance of other cultures and faiths comes from both Ace and I, because we came from a family-oriented culture. I grew up with my grandmother and grandfather, and Ace grew up with both his parents,” Chelsea said. “We always taught our kids to respect each other, respect others and love one another. That is just how we raised them. It is how we were raised, and we wanted to see that in our kids, once we had them.”
Speaking of which, Chelsea says when they were dating, Ace mentioned that he wanted three kids, and she agreed.
“I stuck with three,” she said. “That is all I wanted, too. No more than that. Too much work.”
She said she was thrilled when AJ promised to get his degree from BYU within three or four years after he declared for the NBA draft on April 23.
“That felt wonderful. That is all I asked for, and he knows that. He knows that I always think you need to have a backup. He needs to graduate,” Chelsea said. “When AJ started to know that he was going to get far in basketball, he talked about wanting to join the G League. I said, ‘Absolutely not, you gotta go to school. You gotta go to college.’
“We want him to finish at BYU, and that was kind of a tug-of-war in the house,” she continued. “Once AJ promised me that he will get his degree, I was like, ‘OK, you can declare. But getting your degree is a must.’”
As for AJ’s dad, Chelsea described her husband as a father who made many sacrifices when the kids were young so that they could have a better life than he did growing up.
“When he was a cop, sometimes he worked double shifts. He would go in at midnight and not come home until after 4 p.m., and then would get a few hours of sleep, and then go back again,” she said. “He has always wanted to make sure his family is well taken care of.”
