Nov. 9, 2007
By Keith Hejna, Penn State Athletic Communications Student Assistant
Helen Darling is all about helping others succeed. That is why she has made a career off assists.
Darling, a point guard for the San Antonio Silver Stars, finished her Penn State basketball career with 791 assists - third in school history - and in 2005 became the 21st player in WNBA history to amass 500 career assists.
Perhaps the most meaningful assist of her career came when her phone rang one night in August 2003 - about a year from the date that she informed her agent, Mike Cound, that she was pregnant with triplets.
Cound, who was also then-Detroit Shock forward Astou Ndiaye-Diatta's agent, told her Astou was on the line and had something to tell her.
"I'm thinking, `Why does he have her on the phone?'" Darling said.
Once the formalities were out of the way, Astou told Darling the news. She was pregnant with triplets. Four months removed from having her children, Darling offered counsel on everything from WNBA maternity leave policies, to making a comeback after her pregnancy was over.
"This is what worked for me," Darling said to her, careful not to impose her will too forcefully. "Try it. If it doesn't work, there are other opportunities."
After about 10 minutes on the phone, she told Astou to "relax and rest because [you] won't be able to rest for 18 years or more." And Darling, who is a literacy advocate, a spokeswoman for various causes, and an author of children's books, in addition to being a professional basketball player and mother of triplets should know since rest is not exactly high on her to-do list.
Triple Double
The opportunity to prove that she could double as a mother of triplets and a professional basketball player presented itself to Darling on April 13, 2002, when she gave birth to sons Ja-Juan and Jalen, and daugther, Nevaeh.
After missing the 2002 season, she was eager to rejoin the Cleveland Rockers' starting lineup. The process to get back onto the court was tedious and long, but she started early. Just six weeks after leaving the maternity unit at Ohio State University Hospital, Darling began exercising on a StairMaster and training with free weights in her home in order to lose her pregnancy weight and get back into shape.
"My greatest achievement is coming back after giving birth to triplets," she said. "I had a lot of people who didn't think I would be able to do it. I doubted myself at times."
In 2003, Darling made her comeback to the WNBA, finishing the season with 128 assists - the second-highest single season total in Rockers history.
"My success is determined by my [teammates'] success, which in return determines the team's success," she said. "I love dishing out assists."
Making teammates better is a difficult skill to learn. So is parenting. Darling attests that being a point guard has helped her become a better mother, and vice versa.
"Basketball has helped me deal with my kids, and my kids have helped me deal with the players on my team because everyone is different," she said. "They've taught me how to be patient and how to deal with people individually."
Even though the birth of her children represented an unsuspected setback in her basketball career, Darling never looked at the trio as a setback in her life.
"They are truly a blessing," she said.
"I wrote the way I talked"
Writers are often their own harshest critics. Darling is no exception.
"I'm not good at writing, and I'm very bad at spelling and grammar," Darling said.
Darling, who says she always wrote the way she talked - "in slang," - combined her education degree with her passion for writing and creative mind to write educational children's books based on her triplets. She wrote seven books - one for each day of the week - starting with Hide-n-Seek Monday, which was released Aug. 17 of this year.
"My main goal, when I wrote the books, was to get them into the school system," she said, "but it is tough."
She is attending a National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE) conference in Nashville to learn more about the process of getting her books into elementary school curriculums.
All seven are completed, minus the illustrations, including Yummy Tummy Tuesday (the follow-up to Hide-n-Seek Monday ) and Free for all Football Friday , which includes a character based on the children's father and Darling's boyfriend, Orlando Tot.
Tot, who has been one of Darling's biggest supporters, also lent his name to the publishing company that Darling founded, My Darling Tots Publications. "When you see `Tot,' you think `Toddlers,'" she explained.
Though her current series of books is written about her own toddlers, and for children of similar ages, she plans to follow her triplets through their school years with her pen.
"My ultimate goal is to continue to write children's books based on my kids' lives." When they get to middle school, she plans to write educational books geared toward middle school students - same for when they get to high school.
Even before her current series of children's books, she began writing a novel, which still lacks an ending. She set it aside to finish when she is done playing.
Teaching Fun To Children
In high school, one of Darling's friends bought her a book called Flyy Girl by Omar Tyree. It is about a young girl, Tracy, who grows up too fast, using sex to keep boys in her life and losing her self-respect along the way. After devouring the novel, Darling fell in love with reading.
"It took me to another place," she said. "It was better than watching TV."
Though she lost some of her initial interest in reading when she got serious about athletics, Darling continues to read on a daily basis. "Even now when we travel, sometimes I'll read and people will talk to me, but I can't hear them because I am into that book," she said.
Darling's passion for reading impelled her to become a literacy advocate.
"I found that a lot of kids struggled at reading," she said. "A lot of kids didn't find it fun, so I wanted to show them that reading could be fun."
She convened with children's author Kimberly Johnson and began speaking at elementary schools. Darling reads books, puts on skits and has fun with the children while also educating them.
"That's what I try to get kids to understand," she said. "When you read, you not only learn, but it takes you to another world. It's like you're almost invisible."
She has recently produced a coloring book to use in her school visits called Interactive Reading , which encompasses the five talking points that Darling considers essential to education: coloring, writing, word recognition, picture clues and rhyming words. "It teaches them how to use a regular reading book as an educational tool, and to make it fun," she said.
Darling introduced books to her children at an early age, reading to them nightly. Now that they are old enough, she reads to them first and lets them help her the second time through.
"Sometimes, I just want to go to bed," she said, but rarely does without reading a book with her kids. Though some Saturday nights will be movie nights, Sundays are always reserved for Christian books.
"I tell parents, `This is what I do with my kids. I don't have any research behind it, but I know it works for my kids.'"
"You are uniquely made"
Just as she puts the basketball in the hands of her teammates so that they can score, Darling offers advice about self-esteem to teens so that they can improve their lives. Her teen empowerment program, Uniquely Made, has assisted teens going through difficult times in their lives.
The name of the program came from her central message to teenage girls:
"God made you this way. You are unique for a reason. You are uniquely made."
The concept for Uniquely Made was initially a magazine for young girls to help them cope with everyday issues, but after many successful speaking engagements, Darling decided to create a program that allowed young women aged 11-17 years to be part of interactive workshops where they could voice their concerns and receive immediate feedback from professionals.
Darling used her own life experiences to shape the program. "I felt that I was very unique, being able to play basketball, being a mother of triplets and writing children books," she said.
Though Darling is a professional basketball player, she does not always market herself as that to her audience or their parents. To some people, she is the mother of triplets. "I always try to give them something to remember me by," she said.
For now, Darling has put Uniquely Made on the backburner in order to focus on basketball, writing and literacy. "You want to help the world," she said, "but you've got to take it one step at a time."
Glorious Return
At Penn State, Darling majored in education. On the basketball court, however, she was better at history. Making it, that is.
The 5'6" point guard is the only player in Penn State history to amass 1,000 points, 500 rebounds and 600 assists for her career. The Kodak All-American, who led the nation in assists her senior year, became the first player in school history to earn Big Ten Player of the Year honors.
Though her name graces Penn State's record books, she has not been back since her graduation in December 2001.
"I never had time because I was playing, working, traveling overseas, or doing something," she said.
She will be back from Nov. 9-11 when Penn State hosts its first ever Women's Basketball Coaching Association (WBCA) Classic.
Darling still keeps in touch with some of the people she played with at Penn State, including Tanisha Wright, Kelly Mazzante and Tina Nicholson. "I had a wonderful experience at Penn State," she said.
She plans to play a few pickup games and dole out assists to her former teammates like old times. "I'm going to be so out of shape," Darling said, having not played in over two-months since the WNBA season ended.
Darling's return to State College is not strictly pleasure. She will be doing a reading and signing of Hide-n-Seek Monday at Barnes and Nobles on Saturday Nov. 11. She will also be visiting Panorama Village Elementary School, reading her book to three kindergarten classes.
While she give back to State College using some of the knowledge that the college town instilled in her, she will not forget the role it played in jumpstarting her careers, and the lifelong friends she came away with.
"I wouldn't trade the experience for anything," she said.
Life After Basketball
Darling is a lot of things. She is a basketball player, a literacy advocate, a mother, a role model and an author. She has run basketball clinics and acts a national spokesperson for the March of Dimes foundation. She has even dabbled in hair care products for active women, creating a line that she has put to the side for now, next to her novel and Uniquely Made .
With so much going on, it is amazing that she is able to manage her time so well.
"I've had a wonderful support staff," she said. Her trainer, coach and teammates have been encouraging for the most part.
She even welcomes the judgments of those like Sophia Young a forward on San Antonio. When Darling showed her a version of Hide-n-Seek Monday , Young replied with, "That's ugly."
"Sophia is very blunt, so I respect her opinion," Darling said.
Her biggest support staff, though, has been her family. "The most important thing to me right now is my family and spending quality time with them," she said
With so much going on in her life, that can be a difficult task to accomplish, especially since she plans to play basketball, "as long as these legs let [her] play."
Darling has life after basketball figured out. "If my books do well, I would love to be a full time author, a housewife, a PTA member at the school and just be a mom," she said.
No matter what field she decides to excel in, Darling will always dish out assists because helping others to succeed has been the biggest key to her own success.