A Long Road Ahead

Michael Jones’ powerful legs, rock-solid upper body and shifty moves have helped him run around, through and over tacklers the past two high school football seasons. And now, three weeks before he begins his assault on opposing defenses and Orange County record books, Jones is already looking for running room.

This time, however, his strength, elusiveness and 4,506 career rushing yards cannot help him. As he sits on his aunt and uncle’s living-room couch in this high-desert town on the road to Las Vegas, Jones realizes there is nowhere to go. His luck has run out.

On this day, Jones’ mother is far more formidable than opposing defenses have been. Martha Jones has been her son’s biggest fan throughout much of his prolific prep football career, but now she’s his biggest critic.

“I just wish Michael would spend as much time with the books as he’s spent being a socialite,” she said. “We have all talked to him about it. My family, my brothers’ families, friends of the family. Everybody. But it’s up to him. I’ve told him many times, ‘You have the world at your hands. All you have to do is take it.’ ”

As his mother’s soft voice grows louder and more emotional, Jones’ 6-foot-1 1/2, 200-pound frame sinks into the couch and his eyes well up with tears.

“I think it’s a macho thing,” Martha Jones said. “They don’t want to ask for help because they think they’re too big for it. He’s been spoiled. But when you get to a certain age, it’s time to stop being spoiled and start being responsible.”

There is not much for Jones to say in his defense. He knows his mother is right.

“I can’t change the past,” Jones says.

Although Jones has been gaining on the best running backs in Orange County prep football history--his 4,506 yards place him fifth all-time, 891 yards behind former Valencia back Ray Pallares’ record of 5,397--he’s been losing ground in his bid to become eligible to play Division I college football. Jones has managed to stay eligible at Laguna Hills--one of the county’s top academic schools--by taking less challenging classes. However, many of the courses he’s passed do not meet the NCAA’s core requirements.

Although Jones went to both sessions of summer school this year and carries a C-plus average--one of those sessions was a Scholastic Assessment Test study class--he has no chance of completing enough core classes to qualify to compete at an NCAA Division I school next year.

So while he’s rated by some scouting services as one of the top 25 running backs in the country and was being recruited by Colorado, Ohio State, Florida, USC and UCLA, Jones probably will attend a community college next fall.

The news is not a revelation to Jones, his family,

friends or coach, Steve Bresnahan. But that doesn’t

mean it’s any less frustrating or disappointing.

“When Michael applies himself, he’s very capable of doing college-prep work,” Bresnahan said. “Not always has he applied himself.”

“We knew the time would come where there’d be a chance Michael could earn a scholarship to play Division I football,” said Greg Williams, Jones’ Junior All-American football coach, mentor and friend. “But some kids don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. They take things for granted. Four to five months ago, Michael said, ‘These guys weren’t kidding. I really can go somewhere with this.’ ”

Jones said time simply slipped away from him.

“If I’d have known I could be this good at football, I’d have started earlier with the books,” he said.

Nothing has come easy to Jones in the classroom, but his troublesome subjects are science and math.

“Sometimes all I feel I can do in math is count money,” he said.

Most Division I schools stopped recruiting Jones this summer when they discovered his academic problems were too severe to spend any more time on him. But a few letters still trickle in.

Jones says he doesn’t bother opening the letters anymore, and he refuses to think about what he’s missing this fall and winter: recruiting trips to the college of his choice, phone calls from John Robinson, Steve Spurrier and John Cooper.

Adding to the frustration, Jones has two teammates, fullback Anthony Daye and tight end Saai Makakaufaki, who are being recruited by most Division I schools on the West Coast. Both probably will wind up playing Division I college football even though they have played in Jones’ shadow for two seasons.

“No, it doesn’t bother me because it’s my fault,” Jones said. “I can’t blame anybody. I’ve prepared myself for it.”

Jones said he is prepared to attend Saddleback College next fall, but he is also ready to take a year off from football.

“I’m thinking about not playing next year a lot,” he said. “There’s less chance of getting hurt if I play one year. I’ll also be able to get a lot bigger and work on my grades if I redshirt next year.”

Martha Jones is against Michael playing any football at a community college.

“If something happened and he got hurt, it would mess up his major college career and his education,” she said. “I’d hate to see it wasted at a JC.”

But with Michael, her oldest of two sons, turning 18 in two months, Martha Jones said she is beginning the process of “letting go.”

“If this interview would have happened two years ago, you’d have to talk to me first before I even let you talk to Michael,” she said. “But Michael is his own man now.”

He is the son of Michael W. Jones Sr., a Marine who died when Michael was 3 in a boating accident while visiting family in Lake Charles, La. During Jones’ sophomore season, he had a tattoo placed on his arm that reads “In memory of Michael W. Jones Sr.” After games that season, he would walk over to a quiet place on the field, kneel down, look to the heavens, think of his dad and weep.

“Every now and then he thinks of his father,” Martha Jones said two years ago. “He died when he was young, and Michael remembers a lot about him. I think he really misses that one biological man he can go to.”

In place of his father, Jones often turns to his uncles--Richard and Robert Patterson and James Jenkins--and Williams. Jones said growing up without a father has changed his perspective.

“I’d probably trust people a little more if I had more of a male influence,” he said. “I’m really quiet. I’m not very trusting.”

Jones said he became even less trusting of people because of a few “incidents” during his childhood. Jones would not discuss the specifics, but he did say both experiences were racial in nature.

Williams said Jones has related bits and pieces of certain events to him.

“I know that there have been some things in his environment that are disturbing to him,” Williams said. “He lost a little bit of his confidence because of them. He’s been jilted a little bit by society.”

Jones acknowledged he has experienced some racism in Laguna Hills, a predominantly white middle-class town.

“It doesn’t bother me,” he said. “It’s a part of life. It’s been around for hundreds of years. If you say it’s not there, you’re fooling yourself.”

Though he isn’t very trusting, Jones also isn’t very discriminating.

“Michael hangs around the good, bad and the ugly,” Martha Jones said. “He knows gang members, ‘A’ students and nerds. He treats people as people.”

Jones said he hears the talk on the street about him.

“Most people say he’s a bad kid because he hangs around certain people, or he’s a violent kid because he plays football,” Jones said. “If that’s what people think, fine. They don’t know me.”

Williams said he has warned Jones about the crowd he hangs around.

“To me, they’re not friends, but associates,” Williams said. “Friends are someone who would die for you. I don’t think they’re bad kids, but they’re feeding off the publicity he gets.”

And Jones has been getting publicity since he ran for 243 yards and two touchdowns in his first varsity game against Sonora two years ago. He backed that up with a 197-yard, two-touchdown performance the next week against Trabuco Hills.

In only two weeks, Jones had become the county’s leading rusher and had made people at Laguna Hills forget about Brendan McGraw, who led the county in rushing the previous season. Jones expected to start at running back with McGraw having graduated, but he didn’t expect immediate stardom.

“I didn’t think I was big or strong enough, but I guess when my adrenaline got going . . .,” he said.

Even Williams, who transformed Jones from a linebacker to a running back in the seventh grade, had no idea Jones would become a dominating running back so early in his high school career.

“One day he was an outside linebacker, then a couple years later, wow,” Williams said. “I mean, I couldn’t believe it.”

As an eighth-grader, Jones was 25 pounds too heavy for the Junior All-American weight limit, so he sat out the football season and bulked up for freshman football by lifting weights with Williams every day.

“He wasn’t fat, he was just solid,” Williams said.

Bresnahan said the first time he saw Jones was on a baseball field.

“He was not a very good baseball player, but he was a good athlete,” Bresnahan said.

Once he enrolled at Laguna Hills, Jones quit baseball so he could concentrate on football. By the end of his sophomore season, he had amassed 2,350 yards. His one-season total was the fourth-highest in county history. Last year, playing barely more than a half in six of the team’s 11 games, Jones rumbled for 2,131 yards and 29 touchdowns.

What makes Jones so hard to bring down?

“I like to compete,” he said. “My coach [Williams] told me you can never let one person tackle you. I have good balance and speed.”

Williams says Jones is a natural.

“I told him to stay low and I showed him how to carry the ball,” Williams said. “How not to take a hit but to deliver a hit. He took it from there.”

If Jones stays healthy, he should need only about four games to gain 917 yards and become the county’s all-time leading rusher. When asked what his goals were for this season, the record didn’t even come up.

“I want to win league, hopefully go to [Southern Section] and win that,” he said. “If we do that, I’ll be happy.”

But what about the record?

“I know where I am, but only because the papers keep talking about it,” he said.

But for all that Jones accomplished last year--rushing for more than 2,000 yards and leading his team to nine consecutive victories--his team ended the season with two bitter losses and he was held to less than 100 yards in both games.

In the first loss--a 28-21 defeat to Aliso Niguel in the last game of the season--he was held to 70 yards in 15 rushes. He played with a nasty flu bug and a sore knee he hurt against Costa Mesa in the eighth game.

“I had nothing, no energy” he said. “It was hard to breathe.”

Aliso Niguel Coach Joe Wood said it wouldn’t have mattered if Jones had been healthy.

“He could have been Superman and he wouldn’t have been able to defeat our defense,” Wood said. “We had an extremely quick and aggressive defense. Jones is a very good runner, but he’s not a quick starter. And when you’re not a quick starter and you’re facing a quick, physical defense, you can’t break the first tackle. So you can never get going. He needs to see the field and he never got a chance to see it against us.”

In a first-round 17-13 playoff loss to Pacifica, Jones had 68 yards in 16 carries.

“Those last two games, we mostly used him as a decoy,” Bresnahan said. “He lost muscle tone and weight when he couldn’t run and lift.”

Jones ignores those critics who say he will set the county rushing record playing in a Division VIII league--the Pacific Coast--and against a less-than-stellar nonleague schedule.

“It doesn’t bother me because I know what I can do,” he said.

Wood said Jones’ record should not be tainted.

“He’s going to do it,” Wood said. “He’s deserving of whatever he gets. You can’t hold where he plays against him. That’s the school he went to and the opponents he had to face. It’s a great thing. Great for him, his family and his program.”

Just days before fall practice and the beginning of the march toward the record, Jones spent some time relaxing with his family in Victorville and took quick trips to Las Vegas and Magic Mountain.

“I’m sort of dreading it,” said Jones, who has gained 15 pounds of muscle mass and lost his dreadlocks since last season ended.

Soon, Martha Jones will cease being a critic and start becoming a fan again.

“I’m a proud parent,” Martha Jones said. “I cheer just as loud now as I did when he was an All-American. If I’m quiet, people wonder what’s wrong with me. I always say I’m cheering for two people, me and his dad. That’s why I’m so loud.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Pursuing Pallares

Laguna Hills’ Michael Jones is the fifth-leading rusher in career yardage as he begins his senior year. Here’s where he stands compared to the top ground-gainers in Orange County history:

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Rusher Yards School Years Ray Pallares 5,397 Valencia 1983-85 Reuben Droughns 4,887 Anaheim 1993-95 Derek Brown 4,878 Servite 1986-88 Scott Seal 4,573 Irvine 1990-92 Michael Jones 4,506 Laguna Hills 1995-

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Source: Times reports