Springing Ahead, Falling Back : Poly: The school’s fortunes change with the seasons, but two-sport standout Jonathan Campbell remains a constant.

Arms pumping, legs churning, teeth clenched, Poly High junior Jonathan Campbell rounds third base, his teammates roaring their approval as they leap from the bench.

The relay from the distant North Hollywood left fielder to the shortstop becomes merely a drill. But Campbell approaches home plate running harder still, looking like a football running back in a baseball uniform.

Campbell leaps, arms outstretched, reaching for home plate. He lands amid a cloud of dust, gloved hands sliding across the plate, helmet tumbling over his eyes.

Home run, Jonathan Campbell-style.

“He’s a hard nose,” Poly baseball Coach Jerry Cord said. “But he’s not at all a bully-type hard nose. More of an All-American-type hard nose.”

A fitting description of the blond-haired, blue-eyed Campbell, a muscular 5-foot-10 1/2, 183-pound junior with an easy grin and a strong bat.

He is a driven player with a full-throttle approach. In a conference game against Van Nuys this season, Campbell tagged up and scored on a medium-to-deep fly ball to right field. He was on second base at the time.

Said Cord: “You just don’t see that.” In the aforementioned win over North Hollywood, a game in which Campbell homered twice, he made his greatest impact in the field. With Poly leading by a run in the fourth inning and two runners on, Harry Marks launched a fly ball well over Campbell’s head. Campbell turned and sprinted. With no fence in North Hollywood’s left field, he continued to pursue what seemed an uncatchable ball.

His chase scattered a group of North Hollywood football players practicing deep in the outfield and ended in an over-the-shoulder catch some 380 feet from home plate.

Marks, halfway around the infield by then, simply stopped and threw his helmet in disgust.

Campbell’s words match his actions. This is a guy who, when asked whether he wanted to bat with the bases loaded in a pressure situation, responded quizzically: “Isn’t that what we play for all our lives? To get up in that situation?”

Such a competitive fire is engaging. And it is constant.

In the spring, Campbell trots out to left field and bats third for the team ranked No. 4 in the region by The Times, a team unbeaten in conference play, a team with a 22-3 overall record and a legitimate chance to win a City Section 4-A Division title.

In autumn, Campbell toils with a football tucked under his arm; he is a two-time All-Pac-8 Conference running back who spent his junior season plowing for 1,159 yards and 12 touchdowns. But he endured defeat after defeat for a downtrodden Poly team that finished 1-8-1.

Behold the athletic life of Jonathan Campbell, in which winning and losing seem to be dictated by the calendar.

In the fall after football games, Campbell admits, he and his teammates will head to a local fast-food joint, eat a few burgers and, sadly, just go home.

But in the spring?

“It’s great, it’s great, it’s great,” Campbell said with a grin. “After the game, I don’t have to feel depressed or anything.”

Depression has no place on the diamond during this bull-market year. Poly is stacked with depth--so much so that Campbell, for all his talents, does not dominate the statistics.

Pitcher Eddie Castellanos boasts an 11-0 record, best in the region. Rodrigo Dorame, a right fielder and pitcher, is batting .380 and has driven in a team-high 26 runs. Second baseman Roy Lozano, an excellent defender, is batting .338 with a team-high seven doubles. Senior shortstop and cleanup hitter Gabe Chavez has knocked in 21 runs and is batting .319. Third baseman Marlon McKinney is batting .354 with 17 RBIs.

“There’s a total difference in confidence,” Campbell said of the disparity between programs. “We don’t feel like a team could really beat us if we’re at our best. Whereas in football, we just don’t have that confidence. We don’t just play on the football team. We worry too much about what we have to do.”

For his part, Campbell is playing well in his first varsity baseball season. He is batting .350, with 21 RBIs, second most on the team. Campbell leads the team in runs scored with 27 and is second in stolen bases with 13. But his contributions, if you listen to his coaches, rise above mere numbers.

“I’ll take a dozen of him,” Cord said. “If you have a dozen Jonathan Campbells on your team. . . . Well, you wouldn’t win ‘em all, but you wouldn’t lose many.”

In one early-season game that Poly was winning easily, Cord pulled his starters. While most savored the respite, Campbell grabbed a helmet then raced toward first base--where he coached for the remainder of the game.

“He won’t settle for anything less than maximum performance,” football Coach Fred Cuccia said. “And he doesn’t know how good he can be. . . . After he ran for 280-something (287) yards against Verdugo Hills, he kept telling the team, ‘I’m nothing special. I’m just part of the team.’ ”

Team talk aside, Campbell relishes individual play. Which might explain his preference in sports.

“In football, I guess, you can hide if you’re not good,” he said. “You can hide and not do your job. But in baseball, you’re right there in the open. Everybody’s looking at you and the pitcher just goes at you, and what you do with it, you know, depends on you.”

But Cuccia, a veteran coach who is in his second year at Poly, might have started to resuscitate the football program. The spring football class at Poly has an enrollment of 90--70 more than last year. Cuccia credits part of the upswing to the on-campus recruiting done by Campbell and his teammates.

“You have to give them a program where they’re having fun and experiencing success at the same time,” Cuccia said. “Poly hasn’t been able to do that in the past, but we want to have our kids enjoy what they’re doing and get almost the same thing that Jerry has going in the baseball program.”

Because McKinney, Dorame and Campbell are football players, Cuccia takes more than a passing interest in the baseball program. Cuccia was in the dugout when Poly’s 12-game win streak ended in a 7-6 loss to Birmingham in the Holt-Goodman tournament final.

Campbell had been doubled off third base in the final inning to kill a Poly threat. After tearing off his jersey, Campbell sat in the dugout, alone, elbows on knees, and stared off in the distance. No one dared approach him.

“I saw him after that game and he was just devastated,” Cuccia said. “He’s just a tremendous competitor. That’s what sets him apart from all the other kids at Poly.”

Witnessing that intensity also piqued Cuccia’s interest on a personal level.

“I’m really looking forward to having him (next fall),” Cuccia said. “And you tell the other schools out there that they can’t have him. He’s ours.”