Hometown Hero Gives Generously
It is 10 minutes to five, and in the seat of his dad’s pickup a squirt bottle-sized boy is trying to shimmy a football jersey over his shoulder pads.
The trucks and minivans and 100,000-mile sedans crawl over the mountain highways of northeast Washington and up and down the backroads along Lake Roosevelt to the confluence here in the high school parking lot, which is filling up quickly. The passengers make their way to the football field in twos and threes, grateful that a stunningly blue evening is just as stunningly balmy and will not add 10 pounds of sweat to the gear in which they’re swaddled.
Two teenagers grouse about summer jobs that aren’t making them millionaires. A Pop Warner-type with “Mad Dawg” stenciled on his jersey makes it a point to butt helmets with every kid his size, and several a good deal smaller.
“Why does everybody grab my face mask?” complains one of his victims.
Through this assemblage, wearing an old Hoopfest T-shirt (“I wanted to be a basketball player, but I couldn’t shoot or dribble”), walks James Darling - National Football League linebacker, groom-to-be (he marries Kim Penny on Saturday in Coeur d’Alene) and star attraction of the fastest growing football camp in Stevens County, and quite possibly beyond.
How you give back to your hometown speaks volumes about just what you received in the first place. And for this one week in June, the soft voice of James Darling fairly roars.
And not just symbolically.
When a group of junior high players he’s coaching in a 7-on-7 drill finally - after countless losses and no-gains - springs a running back for a long one, Darling’s whoop can be heard halfway to Colville.
“When he says something,” offers Kettle Falls eighth grader Cody Fox, “you listen a little closer.”
Because Darling is one of those guys you see playing on TV on fall Sundays, Fox means - but also because he is one of them.
When Tracy Flugel became the head coach at Kettle Falls in 1996, Darling was an All-Pac-10 linebacker at Washington State and soon to be a second-round draft pick of the Philadelphia Eagles. One of his early priorities was to ask Flugel what he could do for the old school.
Flugel suggested a football camp. Darling offered to lend more than his name.
He cajoles teammates and other NFL friends to come and donate their time. This week, Eagles Brandon Whiting, Duce Staley and Alex Van Dyke volunteered. So did Ndukwe Kalu of the Redskins and Jon Harris of the Patriots.
“They’re a little shocked when they get here,” Darling admitted. “Driving up, the towns get smaller and smaller and they ask, `Where are we going?’ They think you’re driving them off a mountain or something.”
They stay for a day or two, depending on their schedules. But like Darling, they don’t just make an appearance and sign autographs - which is often the case with celebrity guests at more camps than you’d care to count.
Whiting, a third-year defensive tackle out of Cal, is down in a three-point stance, showing an offensive lineman from Kettle how to beat a stunt with a slide-step. Darling gets 1-on-1 with an aspiring linebacker, demonstrating how to shed a block with his hands and urging second-effort.
“Get back in the play and make the tackle,” he challenges. “You want to be a hero.”
This goes on for 2-1/2 hours every night - for the lordly sum of $30 for Kettle kids, $50 for outsiders. Babysitting costs more than that. Darling’s campers get a T-shirt and an all-you-can-eat barbecue besides.
“By the time I’m done playing, I’d like to get it to where we’ve got the pro guys who come up taking kids to the river and that kind of stuff - hanging out all week,” Darling said.
No wonder, then, that what started as a Kettle-only enterprise that drew 70 kids last year has mushroomed to 215 this summer. Each evening, they come streaming in from Colville, Republic, Inchelium and Ione. There’s even one camper from Montana, and another from Minnesota.
“Kids here might think that just because they’re from a small town, they’re trapped - that their dreams have to end with high school sports,” Darling said. “You get guys up here like Brandon and the others and these kids can see that they’re just people, too. And if they set their dreams and goals high, they can accomplish great things.”
But, of course, no one is a better example that Darling.
“Growing up here, the closest thing we had was probably Alan Boatman,” he remembered. “He was the biggest name we’d heard about, because he’d made it to Washington State and played college football. It’s always good to have someone who’s done it before, to show you it can be done.”
Darling, certainly, has bucked the odds. How many NFL players come from towns of less than 1,500 people?
Heading into his fourth year with the Eagles, Darling will go to training camp trying to earn back the starting job he lost midway through last season after he suffered a broken hand. His transition to the pro game, he admits, has been somewhat fitful - a small-town guy trying to come to terms with the big-business atmosphere of the NFL.
“College is a lot of rah-rah,” he explained, “and in the pros, it’s basically every man for himself. You have a job to do, and it’s constant pressure - even in practice. You make a mistake in college at practice and it’s, well, just practice. In the pros, every single snap counts.
“It’s fun and the rewards are cool, but at the same time, it’s a lot of pressure.”
But not this week. Not for the kids at camp, and not for their celebrity coaches.
“The first thing I do is take them to my grandmother’s house and make sure they get a good meal,” Darling said. “And then I let them see what Kettle is all about.”
If they’re James Darling’s friend, however, chances are they already know.