New Season Is a New Beginning for El Camino Back Harper : Community colleges: After recovering from career-threatening injuries, runner wants to show he has regained his old form.

There are two good reasons why tailback Mark Harper is eager about El Camino College’s football game against College of the Sequoias on Saturday.

First, El Camino, which is ranked No. 2 in the state by the JC Athletic Bureau, is playing its season opener. It will be a chance for the Warriors to prove their ranking against visiting and fourth-ranked College of the Sequoias at 7 p.m.

Second, Harper is excited about starting his first game since a spectacular junior season at Santa Monica High.

The 6-foot-1, 193-pound sophomore wants to prove that he has regained his old running form. Harper says he has completely recovered from two broken ankles that forced him to miss much of his senior season at Santa Monica. He is also relieved that there were no last-minute lineup surprises this year.

Last season, Harper and Ivan Wilson were set to alternate at tailback, but talented Anthony Daigle transferred to El Camino from Arizona State and became the starter. Daigle became the first running back to rush for more than 1,000 yards in Coach John Featherstone’s six years at El Camino.

“I told them they were going to be mop-up, clean-up to Daigle and neither one liked it,” El Camino quarterback and backfield Coach Fred Peterson said. “Mark was real disappointed. He thought about transferring.”

It was a difficult season for the 19-year-old Harper, who wasn’t accustomed to standing on the sidelines. He played in only four games as a high school senior because of recurring ankle problems, but said he was completely healthy last season, which made sitting around agonizing.

“At first I couldn’t deal with it, knowing how much I wanted to play,” said Harper, who lives in Inglewood with his father, James. “It was real hard and it was a very frustrating year. I was going to quit, but then I figured everybody’s gotta sit sometime. I admit at first I had a bad attitude about it. I mean I’ve been playing football since I was 8.”

Harper probably would have played Division I college football as a freshman had it not been for his career-threatening injuries. He broke both ankles in separate basketball games prior to his senior football season. He broke his left ankle during his junior season on the Santa Monica basketball team and his right one during a summer league game. Both times he went up for a layup and landed awkwardly.

The injuries temporarily sidelined his dream of earning a scholarship to a Division I school. As a junior at Santa Monica in 1988, he rushed for 1,678 yards and 29 touchdowns and earned All-CIF and All-Bay League honors. Santa Monica won the Bay League title that year and lost to Muir High in the first round of the playoffs.

Former Santa Monica Coach Tebb Kusserow says Harper was contacted by several four-year colleges after his junior season, including USC, Nebraska and Oregon.

“We had a lot of college attention focused on him,” Kusserow said. “Very few people have the foot speed Mark has. I had a lot of mail during that time. Mark is a very strong, powerful type of runner. He’s a very tough person physically.”

Kusserow says Harper went all-out in the few games he played as a senior.

“I remember in our first game against Pasadena, Mark scored three touchdowns,” Kusserow said. “He was also a great receiver and more than anything he wanted to play. But he just never completely recovered.”

Harper scarcely played in the second game of his senior season and didn’t play again until the last two games of the year. He says it made him somewhat depressed.

“There was my scholarship right there, down the drain,” he said. “It was a hard time, real hard.”

Harper has worked hard to change that. He spent the summer training with teammate Fred Safford, a wide receiver, and gained about 12 pounds of muscle.

“When he first came here he was still limping, but he’s gained weight and he picked up a step or two in speed. He’s paid the price,” said Peterson, who recruited Harper after seeing him at a high school all-star game.

Peterson classifies Harper with two former El Camino standouts. He says Harper is a combination of Daigle and Aaron Craver, a rookie with the Miami Dolphins this season.

“He’s a breed between those two guys,” Peterson said. “He’s a little bit quicker than Anthony and I believe he’s every bit as good as Anthony. He was an avoider, a slipper. You could never hit him head on. Mark is a slasher. He rams it in there and hits them head on. Mark is also an explosive type of guy like Craver.”

Featherstone says, barring injury, Harper should play a big role in the Warriors’ offense.

“Now it’s his turn. He’s been very impressive in our intrasquad scrimmages,” Featherstone said. “He turns it up a notch when he gets on the field.”

And what about the combined pressure of making a comeback and replacing the school’s best rusher?

“I try not to think about it too much,” Harper said. “But I did good in high school and I know everybody wants to see how I’ll do in college. I’ll just strive to be the best.”

Safford, the teammate, has faith in Harper, but says it’s inevitable that he feels somewhat stressed about his new role.

“He’s a very good athlete, but he does feel the pressure because he talks about it a lot,” Safford said. “I can tell.”

Featherstone says it’s unfair to compare Harper to Daigle. “He doesn’t need to worry about trying to be better than Anthony Daigle,” he said. “He’s just as good on his own.”

In a strange way, Harper says, he has benefited from the two years he spent pacing the sideline at football games. He believes next year he’ll be better prepared to play Division I football.

“I feel stronger now,” he said. “I got a better feel for the college game now. I had time for maturing and understanding the college level. That’s not so bad.”