No Shortage of Heart for Starzz Guard Black

Frank Layden saw only one player at the WNBA tryout camp in April--mainly because that one player seemed to be everywhere.

This compact fireball was diving on the floor at any provocation, making the extra pass, ferociously blocking out centers and forwards in the paint, and doing it all as the smallest player on the court.

Layden knew he had to get Debbie Black, a former ABL Defensive Player of the Year who some thought was too old and too small to be a star in the WNBA.

“Her unbelievable passion for the game started to rub off on me,” Layden said. “She made me remember why I loved basketball in the first place.”

But when he greeted Black and congratulated her on her showing, she had no clue who Layden--the Utah Starzz coach and former NBA Coach of the Year--was.

“He said, ‘You mean, you don’t know who I am?’ ” Black remembered. “I said, ‘Should I?’ ”

“It’s a reflection of how focused she is,” Layden said. “She concentrates more of her life on basketball than anybody I know.”

She will turn 33 next month, but Black--who at 5-foot-2 was the shortest player in the ABL and will likely be the shortest in her new league--shows no signs of losing her reputation as one of the most ferocious competitors women’s basketball has ever seen.

There is nothing frivolous about her Tasmanian Devil nickname. She actually played there for seven years.

“She’s the best defensive player in the league,” teammate Tricia Bader said. “She’s the most fit player I’ve ever seen. With her height, you can’t let your quickness or your toughness slide one bit, and she hasn’t. She’s amazing to me.”

But beneath the frenzied play and the focused demeanor is a woman who compares the demise of the ABL, where she played with the Colorado Xplosion, to the death of a family member. She also considers it “an honor” to be looked up to as a role model for short people--by little girls, for instance.

Deeply committed to women’s issues and childhood development, Black knows the WNBA “will never be the same as the ABL, because we didn’t create it.

“Women didn’t start this league, and it’s great that we’re all getting this opportunity, but I believe in what the ABL believed in. It’s a very happy time in my life, but it’s also very sad.”

Bader is one of the many younger Starzz who already have come to see Black as a role model for them, both on and off the court.

“You look at the way she takes care of herself and the effort that she gives to everything in her life, and it’s inspiring,” said Bader, a guard who is sharing a car with Black during the WNBA season. “She isn’t going to let anybody tell her she’s too short or too old or anything, if it’s something she wants to do.”

Black was raised in the Philadelphia suburb of Warminster, where she was “a typical tomboy” with a paper route and a passion for sports. She began playing basketball at 7, and she followed in her sister Barb’s footsteps by going to college at nearby St. Joseph’s.

She had a basketball scholarship and walked on to the school’s softball and field hockey teams, earning 12 varsity letters in four years. The only other St. Joe’s athlete to do that--male or female--was Barb.

“We have a terrific amount of energy in our family, and a great work ethic,” Black said. “We have a hard-working, German background from our parents, and it carried over to us. Whatever I get into, I’m obsessed to do it well.”

After graduation, she played for the Tasmanian Islanders from 1989-96. Her Hobart club won two Australian league championships in a city so remote it didn’t get a McDonald’s restaurant until her third year there.

Being literally half a world away from her family and friends further concentrated her energies and demands on herself.

“You accept what you do, and you know this is part of the sacrifice for what you do,” Black said. “You’d like to be a John Stockton or a Karl Malone and live 14 years in the same spot. . .but in [women’s] basketball, we’re just starting. We have to do this in order to do what we love.”

Black embraced the opportunity to come home to the ABL, and she quickly made herself at home in Denver. She was voted Colorado’s fifth-most-influential woman in a poll last year for her extensive community service.

She was in Philadelphia watching a high school team coached by her sister when her father told her the ABL had folded. She was stunned.

“It’s still hard to talk about it,” she said. “I felt like that was my team. It hurt as if someone in my family had died. It took a long time for me to get over that.”

Although she knew competition for jobs in the WNBA would be fierce, she didn’t for a moment think her career was over. After all, competition is what she thrives on.

So she stayed in shape with an offseason training program that might make even Malone look over his shoulder. In addition to weight training and shooting, she does intense cardiovascular work constantly.

“I’ve been lucky with my knees and haven’t had any problems there,” Black said. “I like to run eight to 10 miles a day when I can. If I’m kind of tired, I’ll do a bike for an hour.

“You’ve got to make sure--particularly when you’re little--that you maintain your weight. I tend to get too fanatical with my training, so I need someone to keep my balance.”

Despite her meeting with Layden, Black thought she would be drafted by the two-time champion Houston Comets, who had shown the most interest.