DAILY PILOT HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL PLAYER OF THE WEEK:

Danny Miller, Michael Helfrich, and Andrew McDonald have been friends since before the boys were in kindergarten.

The three of them used to play, have slumber parties, and do all the things school-age boys like to do together. They know everything about each other. Growing up in the same community, their households just overlapped.

“The boys could have lived at any of our houses,” said Ellen Miller, Danny’s mother.

Now in high school, and all playing varsity football for a Newport Harbor team that’s 4-1, Miller, Helfrich, and McDonald have grown into their own personalities, with Miller taking on quieter, sometimes more serious approach to things than the other two.

“Before games, he doesn’t really talk at all,” McDonald said.

Perhaps it’s because Miller discovered, earlier than most children, that life can give you a lot to ponder, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s time to figure everything out.

Ellen Miller was in her early 40s when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer — one of the most deadly forms of the disease — in 1999. Danny, the youngest of four boys, was only 8 at the time.

According to the American Cancer Society, ovarian cancer ranks fifth in cancer deaths among women. The group estimated that about 20,000 women in the U.S. will develop ovarian cancer this year, and about 15,000 women will die from it in the same time frame.

His mother tried to shield him from the gravity of her illness and the misery of chemotherapy by resting while Danny was at school. And for awhile, it worked. Miller said he first understood how sick his mother was when she made the decision to shave off what was left of her hair.

Miller, Helfrich, and McDonald aren’t just linked through their childhood follies. Helfrich and McDonald and their respective families were available to offer support when Ellen was diagnosed and going through treatment.

The families offered some sanctuary and normalcy for Danny, and McDonald’s mother would make dinners to send to Ellen.

“We pretty much tell each other whatever’s going through our lives,” McDonald said. “We’re pretty close.”

Ellen has been cancer-free since 2004.

For the 2006 Relay for Life, Miller wrote an honorarium for his mother, which now occupies a sacred space on the Millers’ refrigerator.

To my Mother: Your courage and drive to live inspired me more than you will ever know. Seeing how you live the way you do after what you experienced makes me want to live my life to the fullest, and wisely. I love you.

He participated in the relay with Ellen, and his father, Bruce.

“I think the fact that he experienced that has given him a depth and maturity that his peers don’t have,” Ellen said. McDonald agreed.

Miller, a junior with a 4.2 grade point average, has proven that depth and football can co-exist, quite easily. He faces defenders head-on because that’s the way he prefers it.

“I like the contact,” Miller said. “I like getting hit. I like bringing it to them — I guess that’s how you would say it.”

Miller had 229 rushing yards and one touchdown on 25 carries for Newport Harbor in its 39-30 win over Mira Costa Friday. He came in the game as the third-string running back, because Ben Frazier and Michael Helfrich were both hurt.

Miller is active in a number of causes. He coaches basketball for the Boys & Girls Club. He is a member of the Beach City Service League, like many of his teammates.

He’s a member of the Newport Beach Youth Council, which meets monthly to address the needs to teens in Newport Beach, and advises the city council on issues that affect youth. But that’s about the extent of Miller’s political savvy.

He’ll be old enough to vote by the time the 2008 presidential elections get here, but so far, he doesn’t have a preferred candidate.

“I haven’t really looked into it, even though I will be voting,” Miller said, smiling. “I kinda need to get on that.”

Miller is also the president of the youth group at his temple, Shir Hama’alot. The group helps organize and host a semi-annual luncheon for Holocaust survivors.

As a freshman at Newport Harbor, he helped to bring in a group of speakers from the Genocide Intervention Network talk about the humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region. The group presented to students from the Da Vinci Academy, a smaller math-and-science learning community within Newport Harbor.

“Being from the background that I am — that I’m Jewish — seeing the effects of the Holocaust — I don’t want to see something like that again,” Miller said.

And so Miller — who also volunteers for the Ovarian Cancer of Orange County Alliance, a group his mother started — is aware that for many people in the world, life is far from the crystal stair it can seem to be in the insular bubble of Newport Beach.

Ellen mother made sure of it.

“I think you have to do that if you live here, in Newport Beach,” she said. “This is not the way the majority of people live.”

SORAYA NADIA McDONALD may be reached at (714) 966-4613 or at [email protected].