Kaufman Is the Talk of Lompoc : Prep football: Senior running back has scored 70 touchdowns and gained nearly 6,000 all-purpose yards.

Five years ago, Napolean Kaufman’s life was at a crossroads. While growing up in Lompoc, a city of 35,000 located 35 miles north of Santa Barbara, Kaufman had gained notice as a talented athlete and problem youth.

On the football field, he was a skinny, fast running back in the Pop Warner League. His teammates considered him a star after he seemed to score touchdowns at will. However, off the playing field, Kaufman found trouble with a group of older teen-agers, who considered themselves the neighborhood gang.

During the summer before seventh grade, Kaufman got in trouble while hanging out with that gang and was sent to a Santa Barbara County reform school after getting caught stealing bicycles.

“I was thinking like I was a bad guy at the time,” said Kaufman, one of the top high school senior football players in the state this year. “When I was playing football, I was fine. But when I wasn’t, I got into trouble. I didn’t get back into the middle school until halfway through my eighth-grade year.”

Kaufman, an only child, and his mother, Lujuana, moved to Lompoc from Kansas City soon after he was born in 1971. In his early years, Kaufman’s uncle, Tony White, played a major role in getting him started in football.

Lujuana Kaufman remembers when her son started to turn things around off the football field. “That one summer he just started hanging out with the wrong group,” she said. “After he got in trouble with the police and spent five days in juvenile hall, he told me, ‘Mom, I’ll never do that again.’ And, he hasn’t been in trouble since.”

While keeping his record clean off the field, Napolean Kaufman has set several records on it. Since his sophomore year, he has been a marked man, but that distinction has not stopped the 5-foot-9, 170-pounder.

In his high school career, Kaufman has rushed for 4,027 yards in 474 carries for an average of 8.6 yards a carry. He has gained 5,829 total yards and scored 70 touchdowns, including three on kickoff returns, two on punt returns and four on interception returns.

This season, Kaufman has been slowed by an ankle injury but has still rushed for 836 yards in 91 carries and has 16 touchdowns in five games. In his 25 games as the starting tailback, Lompoc has a 23-2 record.

Both Kaufman and his mother credit White with pushing him in his football career, which helped Kaufman escape the bad cycle he was in. “Tony is basically responsible for where Nip (a nickname for Napolean) is today,” Lujuana Kaufman said. “Sometimes I think, what if (Tony) wasn’t there to pick up Nip. He was always there talking to Nip and encouraging him. Every year Tony always paid to sign Nip up for football and even bought him his first pair of cleats.”

White said he merely tried to be a role model since Kaufman’s father, a professional body builder and former Golden Gloves boxing champion, lived in Kansas City.

“Nip just had that natural talent even at a young age,” White said. “I tried to put him in sports to keep him out of juvenile hall because his mother was having problems trying to get her life together. He always loved football, and once he started playing, it was like he scored a touchdown every time he touched the ball.”

Kaufman’s athletic ability is not confined to the football field. He also is a track and field standout. In June, he became the third runner in the last 11 years to win both State sprint titles (in the 100- and 200-meter dashes) in the same year. Already an accomplished long jumper with a personal best over 24 feet, Kaufman skipped his speciality because of a sore leg and then swept a strong sprint field in winning the 100 in 10.57 and the 200 in 21.15 seconds.

Despite his success in track and field, Kaufman is firm on his athletic priorities. “Football is definitely my first love. I see myself as a football player who runs track to help himself on the football field. “

Kaufman’s athletic exploits have put Lompoc on the map and made him a mini-celebrity in town. His address is not a secret to teammates since he lives in a two-bedroom apartment across the street from Lompoc High.

Last season, Kaufman gained 2,182 yards rushing and scored 39 touchdowns in leading an undefeated Lompoc team to the Northern League title and into the Southern Section Division VII championship game. It was in this title game that he introduced himself to Gardena Serra Coach Leo Hand.

In a battle of undefeated teams, Serra led Lompoc, 22-3, with 3:17 left in the second quarter. Nearly everyone knew that for the Braves to come back, Kaufman needed the ball.

Finally, Serra kicked off to Kaufman, and the crowd at El Camino College stood in anticipation of his return. He did not disappoint. A quick shoulder dip and a sidestep swerve were all it took as Kaufman raced 95 yards up the middle of the field to give Lompoc its first touchdown and the momentum going into halftime.

Serra was able to hold on in a wild-scoring second half to win, 34-31, but not before Kaufman added three more touchdowns in accounting for 283 yards of total offense while handling the ball 22 times.

“I had never seen him run until that night,” Serra’s Hand said. “We tried to treat him like any other good back until that kickoff return. Then. . . .we stopped kicking to him.”

Hand’s oversight is a mistake not many opposing coaches have made in Kaufman’s career. Last season, he averaged 70 yards a kickoff return. Lompoc Coach Dick Barrett marvels at what Kaufman has done for the school.

“He is the finest high school player I have ever seen,” Barrett said. “It’s obvious that he has meant a great deal to our program. We’re in every game with a chance to beat anybody with him on the field.

“When he first came here, he was a 135-pound sophomore who we decided to play at Z-back in a wing-T position. He was doing fine, but we had to make a change because we started the season 1-6. We then moved him to tailback and we’ve been winning ever since.”

Kaufman gained 1,008 yards as a sophomore in leading Lompoc to the Southern Section divisional semifinals, but it was his efforts last season that gained him national exposure. This season, Barrett has placed more responsibility on Kaufman to carry the Braves.

“We’re trying to use him more this season,” Barrett said. “The first three games, he was phenomenal. He was on track to do as well as or better than he did last year until he hurt his ankle on the first play of our fourth game.”

The injury, which caused Kaufman to miss three games, may have been a blessing for the young star because it gave him a chance to rest from the hectic pace he was keeping. Kaufman said it helped him gain control of his life again and to look back at a time when his future did not seem so bright.

“In Pop Warner, I used to score a lot of touchdowns because I was so much faster than everyone else,” Kaufman said. “I got my name in the paper a few times, and people always told me I was good but it didn’t really sink in until I got into high school.

“My whole life just changed when I started high school. I did real well my freshman year in football and then I started hanging out with my football teammates. I started to have a different outlook on life and I’ve never looked back.”

Nearly everyone in town knows Kaufman as ‘Nip’, a name he inherited from his father and grandfather, Napolean Kaufman, Jr. and Sr. Evidence of his increasing popularity is at Kaufman’s fingertips in his bedroom. A tape of an ESPN feature on him is cued up in a VCR that sits next to a neatly stacked box filled with postcards and letters from college football programs across the country.

Kaufman likes all the attention he has received the last two years, but it has drawbacks. Privacy is something of a memory for the 18-year-old senior as he deals with his growing fame.

Fellow students yelled to him as he left campus to walk home, asking him what time he would wake up before the Braves’ night game against Santa Maria last Friday. Even a local teen-ager, who does not attend Lompoc High, started a rumor that he is looking to fight Kaufman for no specific reason, except to gain fame by saying that he brawled with the city’s newest television star.

“I can’t wait to get away to college,” Kaufman said a few hours before his four-touchdown performance in Lompoc’s 33-13 win over Santa Maria. “It seems that everybody wants to get into your life and get a piece of you.”

Dealing with recruiting pressure while playing out his prep career is difficult in Lompoc, where high school football is considered a Friday night priority and Northern League games typically draw crowds of 10,000.

It did not take long for Kaufman to emerge as a top athlete in Santa Barbara County during his freshman year. Thanks to a developed interest in weightlifting, Kaufman added muscle to his small frame and got faster in the process. After leading Lompoc’s freshmen football team to a winning season, Kaufman won the varsity Northern League track titles in the 100 and 200 meters.

Kaufman’s transition to high school athletics may have come easily, but his adjustment in the classroom did not. Because of his earlier problems, Kaufman found himself behind in almost every subject upon his arrival at Lompoc High.

Said Barrett: “(Kaufman) was pretty naive when he first came to Lompoc. Because he was out of the school system in junior high school, the first couple of years were not sparkling for him in the classroom. His first way to deal with a problem class was to not go to it. Now, his attitude has changed, and that will help him in the long run.”

Kaufman has made great strides academically since his slow start, raising his overall grade-point average to 2.65 and his college preparatory courses’ average to 2.2. However, he has yet to score over the NCAA requirement score of 700 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. He failed to qualify when he took the test in June, but took the exam again earlier this fall and plans to take it once more in December along with the American College Testing entrance exam.

“I have come a long way since my first year in high school,” Kaufman said. “There have always been a lot of doubters about me in the classroom, but I don’t think that’s right. People who say that I (have problems academically) don’t really know. They just hear it and pass it on.

“I’ve picked up the pace a great deal the past couple of years and I’m doing pretty good now. The first time I took the (SAT) test, I just took it to see where I stood. I hadn’t even taken a solid algebra course yet. I know I’m going to pass (the SAT test) because I feel that I’m caught up now.”

While Kaufman waits to find out his SAT results, he does not have to worry about his athletic abilities.

Said Barrett: “(Kaufman) is just so fast and tough. What separates him from the other guys is his great balance and agility. Stats usually mean nothing, but his 10-yards-per-carry average speaks for itself.

“I have a problem because he is so good. How many great running backs have made it to the Super Bowl? We want to win, but we do better when we have balance. Sure, we could give him the ball 30 times a game and he’d break every record out there, but around here the teams are too good. No one would be able to stop him, but they would be able to contain him.”

Kaufman, who can dunk a basketball while standing with two feet together underneath the rim, is most dangerous in the open field. It is rare to find a team willing to kick or punt to him.

“He is a great running back,” said Serra Coach Hand, who coached former Anaheim Servite and current Nebraska standout back Derek Brown. “He is the fastest kid in the state, which tells you something. He is tough durable and difficult to bring down.”

Next year, Kaufman said he hopes to be playing football as a true freshman. He already has narrowed his list of college choices to Arizona, USC, Washington and Colorado.

“After my sophomore football season, I started to get fired up about things because I saw that I had a chance to go to college,” Kaufman said. “Now, I am only thinking about one thing and that is to stay focused on school so I can get out of here. It is not like I do not like it here, but it is boring and I’m ready to move on to something different.”

When he does head for college, he will take the civic pride of Lompoc with him. Said Barrett: “When he gets out of here, we’ll all be really proud of him in what he has overcome to get there. It’s all right there for him, and he’s that talented to take it.”