Coy Collins Calculating His Future Carefully : Numbers Game: Loara running back hopes his on-field performance and grades add up to a Division I scholarship.

With one eye in his scrapbook and the other on his grade-point average, with his head sufficiently shrunk and his ankle tightly wrapped, running back Coy Collins has played football this year. He has played the game pulled every which way by a painful past, an uncertain future and the questions, so many questions.

Will the ankle hold? Will the nose stay in the books? How many yards does he have to gain before he’s considered great and how great can a back be considered if he doesn’t play in college?

Collins is a senior at Loara High School. Herb Hill, the only head coach Loara has had in 28 years, has called him the best running back the school has ever had.

“He’s in a class by himself,” Hill said. “That’s not a subjective opinion, that’s fact.”

Collins, who played on the varsity as a sophomore, probably will hold every major rushing record at Loara by the time he’s done. The 1,078 yards he has gained in six games this season, second in Orange County, is the school record. Brant Light gained 1,008 in 13 games in 1968.

And yet Collins, who has never played in a playoff game, looks back on last season with dread and looks upon this season as a last chance. “There’s a lot to prove this year,” he said. “I’ve got to show people I can run with the best.”

So far, he’s averaging 9.9 yards a carry. Last week, he gained a school-record 266 yards in a 30-24 Empire League victory against Esperanza. It was the second time he had set that record this season. In the season-opener against Western he rushed for 205 yards, 173 in the second half, breaking Dean Lappin’s 1971 mark of 196 yards.

And yet, is it all enough for him? There’s a limit to how much numbers can tell about a player, let alone a kid trying to struggle through high school, but numbers mean so much to Collins.

--In his room he keeps a scrapbook containing a newspaper clipping that lists the yardage gained by the greatest high school running backs ever to play in the county. He has dreamed of seeing his name on that list, snuggled close to Kerwin Bell, Ray Pallares and Derek Brown. But a nagging ankle injury, that caused him to miss half of last season, dimmed hopes of that.

--On his academic record is a grade-point average hovering a bit above 2.0, the minimum GPA to remain eligible at Loara and to play at a Division I program. His coaches, his teammates, his mother and brother have pleaded and yelled at him to hit the books, something he did last spring when he had a 3.6 GPA for the semester.

--Collins wears 34, the number of his idols--Walter Payton, Herschel Walker and Bo Jackson. Collins admires them for their tenacity and perseverance.

The first time Collins, who averaged three touchdowns a game in Pop Warner and Junior All-American football, touched a ball in his first game at Loara, on the sophomore team, he ran for a touchdown. He gained more than 150 yards in each of his first two sophomore games and was quickly summoned up to varsity.

“We don’t usually bring sophomores up to the varsity,” Hill said.

Still, Collins was less than thrilled about the idea, partially because he was at a new school (he had attended Southern California Christian as a freshman) and partially because at 5-feet-7, 140 pounds, he feared for his safety. “I didn’t know if I could play with the big boys,” Collins said. “The varsity guys were talking about killing me.”

And they were on his team. Still, Collins soon got over his jitters and ended up running for 852 yards in eight games as a sophomore. But the season ended on a sour note when Loara lost its last league game to Katella, 14-6, and missed the playoffs. Collins rushed for 190 yards, but as he watched the game wind down he muttered to no one in particular, “A lot of people are going to pay for this season over the next two years.”

He started making good on that when he rushed for more than 500 yards in his first five games, but in that fifth game, against El Modena, he twisted his left ankle, tearing all the ligaments.

After a few rushes against Esperanza and one down against Los Alamitos, it became obvious that he wouldn’t be able to come back. The cruelest shot came when he watched Loara blow a 14-0 lead and lose to Katella in the final regular-season game. Once again, the loss cost Loara a playoff spot.

“That was really tough to take,” Collins said. “Especially after what I said the year before, and then not being able to back it up against Katella. I came out looking pretty bad.”

Which is a good way to describe his junior year. When his ankle recovered he wrestled, beginning the season at 9-1, only to have it end when he broke his elbow.

The kid whose head had swelled as a sophomore, had it “shrunk down to size,” as junior. It’s no surprise that Collins refers to that time as “a fatal year.”

The ankle never seemed to completely heal and the colleges who had been interested in him after his sophomore season stopped writing. And there was the matter of the scrapbook.

“I used to look at it and get all excited that one day I’d be listed in the top 10,” Collins said. “After my sophomore year, I looked at it and realized it’s something I probably would never be able to achieve.”

As it stands, Collins would need 1,045 more yards to break into the top 10. Presently, he has 2,462 yards and Mike Keefe (Esperanza, 1977-1979) finished his career with 3,506. Given Collins’ big numbers, and the way he has played every game this season, he just might make it, especially if Loara makes it to the playoffs.

Whether that happens or not, Collins already is thinking about what comes after. He read with special interest when Servite’s Derek Brown, Crespi’s Russell White and Hawthorne’s Curtis Conway, among the three top recruits in the nation, last season, were ruled academically ineligible to participate in football under the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s Proposition 48.

Apparently jolted, Collins, who had been removed from the wrestling team as a sophomore when he was ruled academically ineligible, responded with an exceptional academic year during the spring of his junior year.

“I think that proves he can do it,” Hill said. “I think hearing about Brown and those other guys really woke him up.”

As did Mark Harris, Collins’ brother. Harris had been an all-league defensive back at Magnolia but had a penchant for skipping classes. “Everyone told me that I better watch myself but I didn’t listen,” Harris said. “I ended up in a continuation school.”

Harris, a machinist, now tells the younger brother who used to tag along and beg to be included in pickup football games to, “listen to me, don’t follow me.”

What Harris has to say is hit the books. And he says it a lot.

“He’s on me all the time,” Collins said. “I tell him, ‘I’m trying, man, I’m really trying.”

According to Collins and Hill, his GPA is about 2.3.

“I’ve talked with his counselors,” Hill said. “We’ve looked at his core classes and if he stays the course now and keeps hitting the books, he should be OK.”

Not only OK, but in the scrapbook and in college . . . as long as the numbers are there.