For Ashley Darnell-Duran, a Christmas like no other

BERNALILLO — The banner hangs high on the north wall of Spartan Alley, an advertisement neighboring one of the gym’s scoreboards.

The face of the woman on the banner is Ashley Darnell-Duran, Bernalillo High Class of 2007. An insurance agent, a former athlete with the Spartans, and, in the photo on the banner, she is sporting a healthy, flowing head of hair.

Most everything about that banner remains accurate.

Except the hair.

Most of that is gone now.

“I think we would all of us agree that she’s one of the strongest people we know,” said Bernalillo senior forward Estrella Garcia. “She’s not letting cancer beat her.”

Darnell-Duran, 36, is now the head coach of the Bernalillo girls basketball program, and while her service to the Spartans is a top priority for her, it is but one component of a hugely complicated life.

She runs her own business, she’s a wife, she’s a mother to a young son, she’s a coach — and for a huge chunk of this calendar year she’s been waist deep in a tough fight against breast cancer.

“She’s done an amazing job,” said Terry Darnell, Ashley’s uncle, and a former Bernalillo player and head coach himself. “All of us in the family are proud of her as a coach, but even more so as a human being.”

She was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer in April. There have been six rounds of chemotherapy, followed by surgery in September, and now she’s in the middle of a lengthy, months-long radiation treatment plan that takes her to Phoenix for a couple of days every three weeks. Confidence among her doctors, she said, is high that she’ll beat the cancer.

Meanwhile, the team she coaches has taken it on their shoulders to reward her with a trip to the Pit in March. The Spartans are not only ranked No. 6 in Class 4A, they are the division’s last remaining undefeated team. Bernalillo improved to 9-0 with a win over Española Valley on Tuesday night.

“You know,” she said of her demanding juggling act, “a lot of it is my team. These girls have been just … I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for them.”

This was especially true, Darnell-Duran said, going back to the spring when she was initially diagnosed. In the ensuing months, she spent countless hours traveling back and forth to Phoenix for treatments. She still is receiving treatments out of state, but those trips are less frequent and she’s now able to be with her team nearly all the time. The treatments have left her fatigued and less mobile; another of her uncles, Andy, a Bernalillo assistant, has been there to fill the gaps.

And now, Darnell-Duran and her players clearly are both enthusiastically in each other’s corner. The third-year coach said she told her team in the spring that she wasn't going to beat cancer just for the team to lose this season.

“It gives us motivation,” said junior forward Trinity Calabaza. “When she is there, we need to be focused.”

The focus is walking down a ramp the second week in March.

“We’ve always wanted to go to the Pit, but it’s really a deeper feeling now,” Calabaza said.

 “Our goal,” Garcia added, “is to fight for her.”

But the crux of Darnell-Duran’s battle is the strength she has been forced to summon in the face of countless obstacles.

Consider her son, Louie, a typically active 3-year-old who keeps his mother busy. And consider her husband, also named Louie. He recently shattered both his heels in a fall off a ladder while doing work at a family member’s home. He wears large boots on both feet and has been confined to a wheelchair for a couple of months – and will be for a few more weeks. He said he’s practically going to have to teach himself to walk again when the time comes.

“My family, my son … it’s hard. It’s very challenging mentally,” Darnell-Duran said. “Just gotta stay in a positive mindset. (But) basketball has always been my life. They’ve kept me motivated, kept me going every day. This is what keeps me going.”

Perhaps most encouraging, she has retained a healthy sense of humor throughout, particularly in light of what happened to her husband so close to her September surgery.

“We (my husband and I) keep saying it could be worse,” she said, beginning to laugh. “He could have broke his back. So maybe we should stop saying it could be worse.”

Speaking these words, she lets out a big laugh, which is almost an admission that she’s ready to tackle whatever additional challenges present themselves, even for a cancer patient whose plate is already ridiculously crowded with responsibilities.

Her husband, she said, has been her biggest champion of continuing to coach, which is a needed and therapeutic outlet.

The same could roughly be said of the Bernalillo community. Earlier this year, dozens who know Darnell-Duran agreed to get their heads shaved in a collective show of solidarity. She was 100% bald then, her hair has grown in a little since then.

Opposing teams have been on the support train, too. Moriarty put up a pink banner in the Bernalillo gym. Valley High volleyball staged a pink-out match in support of her. Santa Fe Indian offered a personal gift before a recent game, a gesture that reduced Darnell-Duran to tears. The school's homecoming parade featured floats with ribbons in support.

“This town and this community has been amazing,” she said.

Cumulatively, this has helped Darnell-Duran to find a strength she wasn’t sure she had.

“I never knew that I could be this strong,” she said quietly. “When I got the news that it was cancer, death went through my mind immediately. I was like, I have a 3-year-old. I can’t die. This isn’t gonna win, cancer is not gonna win. That’s been my mentality this whole time: I’m not gonna lose this battle.”

And she usually gets what she wants, Terry Darnell said admiringly.

“Ashley has always been a determined young lady,” he said. “She’s always determined to make sure that she is gonna come out on top.”

The family, as it does every Christmas Eve, will gather at Ashley’s home. This obviously will be a Christmas unlike any other. Her gift list is short, and from the heart.

“All I want is for my family to be together,” she said. “That’s all I want. I just want us to sit there and play games and be together.”