Marshall Still Finding His Way

To look into Jermaine Marshall’s eyes is to see a soul battered and bruised on a road not well-traveled.

The eyes are dark and handsome, the better to enhance a strong face, to give it character.

But they are also somber and melancholy, two windows into the past of someone who has lived too fast and too hard for his young age.

“If I kept doing what I was doing [a year ago], I’d probably not live that long,” Marshall said.

Had he continued roaming the streets of Lancaster with his gangster friends, cruising for trouble and easily finding it, Marshall likely was headed for the morgue or prison.

Instead, Marshall is at Camp Kilpatrick, an L.A. County correctional facility in the Malibu hills where counselors try to rehabilitate teenage boys through, among other means, sports.

Marshall is there, roaming football fields and setting records, because a judge sent him back to Kilpatrick for violating probation.

He is there, peering through barbed-wire fences with eyes that spark mostly when talking football, pondering where he came from and where he is going.

“I pray and I think about changing my life,” Marshall said. “I think my future holds a lot. I want to have a normal life.”

*

That Marshall, 18, is among the most gifted football players ever from the region is hardly disputed.

Well, almost.

His detractors say the 6-foot, 215-pound running back is gaining yards at a record pace because the Mustangs play small schools in the Division XII Alpha League.

Marshall has 3,492 yards rushing, 32 shy of tying the state season record set by David Dotson of Valley View in Moreno Valley in 1991. He has scored 56 touchdowns, including four receiving, and needs three more to tie the state record of 59, set by Tustin’s DeShaun Foster in 1997.

He should claim the record from Dotson tonight when the Mustangs (9-4) meet league rival Paraclete (10-3) in the division championship game at Antelope Valley College.

“I think about [the record],” Marshall said. “My main goals when the season started were 2,000 yards [rushing] and helping my team win a championship. . . . This is a big game. I see touchdowns and I see a championship ring on my finger.”

Marshall reached the end zone twice and rushed for 191 yards in Paraclete’s 36-20 victory over the Mustangs on Nov. 5. It was one of only two games in which Marshall failed to rush for 200 yards or more.

His best game was 454 yards rushing and seven touchdowns in Kilpatrick’s 76-32 rout of L.A. Baptist in October, and he had 300 yards or more in four other games.

Sid Ware, Kilpatrick’s coach, said Marshall is doing it in a double-wing scheme manned by an inexperienced offensive line.

“If we had the line we had last year, he would have been over four grand easy,” Ware said. “He can straight-arm you, he can juke you, he can run past you. He can catch the ball out of the backfield and he has thrown a couple of touchdown passes.

“He has all the attributes. I think he’s going to surprise a lot of people. All those people who doubted him.”

Ware said several Division I colleges are interested in Marshall, although grades might force him to first play at a junior college.

“He’s not going to qualify [academically at Cal State Northridge],” Matador interim Coach Jeff Kearin said. “I’ve talked to him about coming to Northridge as a student the first year and then playing the second year.

“I feel good about him. I felt he was dealing with me honestly.”

*

Some might say Marshall was slapped on the face, not his bottom, the day he was born.

“I was never a day with my mom,” Marshall said. “She said she couldn’t handle me, she had some problems in her life, and she gave me to my grandma. I was raised by my grandma.”

Marshall seldom talks to his mother, who declined to be interviewed. His father is a man in a photograph, someone he has never met. His grandmother, Joanne Green, now in a wheelchair because of several ailments, tried to keep the youngster in line but gradually lost control.

“I gave him all the love,” Green said. “I enjoyed raising him . . . He just got in with the wrong crowd later.

“He’s grown up a lot. He tells me he’s going straight and I believe him. I think my grandson will make it.”

Marshall often stayed with relatives and friends, never feeling really comfortable, and suffered a crushing blow when a favorite aunt died. His rudderless life was spinning and football seemed his only motivation or constructive interest.

He attended Antelope Valley High as a freshman in 1996, but landed at Kilpatrick for the first time the next year after being arrested on an armed-robbery charge. Marshall played at Antelope Valley last season, gaining 329 yards as a backup to Bruce Molock, now at Northridge.

But there were problems. Brent Newcomb, Antelope Valley’s coach, said Marshall was unmanageable.

“We gave him a chance here,” Newcomb said. “He wouldn’t come to school, he wouldn’t come to practices. He wasn’t here to take advantage of the opportunity. I thought I could save him when I got him back and I was wrong. His choices weren’t real good.

“He told me he had straightened out and one day he cussed out a school official. That was the final straw for me. . . . The bottom line is he had a hell of a lot of guys working for him here.”

Marshall later violated his probation and was sent to Kilpatrick in July, leaving behind an infant daughter with the child’s mother, to whom he is not married and with whom he doesn’t communicate. He hasn’t seen his daughter since.

*

Marshall’s return to Kilpatrick raised red flags everywhere.

For one, Alpha coaches initially balked at letting Marshall play for the Mustangs, arguing that Kilpatrick was admitted into the league in 1994 with the understanding the team would never have a returning player.

Among the most adamantly opposed to Marshall’s playing were L.A. Baptist officials, who launched a campaign to keep him out of league games. League members voted 5-0 to let Marshall play, but he didn’t forget when it came time to face the Knights.

“They tried to get me kicked out of the league,” Marshall said. “That game had been racing through my head since the beginning of the season.”

That reaction might seem immature, but Curt Amundson, Marshall’s probation officer at Kilpatrick, said Marshall has grown considerably.

“I can see a major difference from two years ago,” Amundson said. “He still has a long ways to go, but Jermaine has been really solid here. In terms of probation, he’s matriculating through the program really well.

“Jermaine and I will go to court [in June] and I’ll make a recommendation that he be allowed to go play [football] if a [college] makes him a good offer.”

Marshall’s eyes gleam at the possibility.

“I want to go to a four-year school and play football,” he said. “I know people are going to have their doubts about me. All I can do is show them I’ve changed. Actions speak louder than words.”

Prep Football Championships

* DIVISION IV

Westlake High blocked a late field-goal attempt and beat San Luis Obispo, 24-21, to win its first Southern Section title. Page 9

Friday’s Scores

* City, Carson 20, Crenshaw 10

* City, Banning 40, Gardena 32

* Div. II, Diamond Bar 17, Upland 14

* Div. IV, Westlake 24, S. Luis Obispo 21

* Div. V, R. Cucmnga 30, Paloma Val. 22

* Div. VI, Newport Harbor 19, Irvine 18

* Div. IX, Bonita 24, Brea Olinda 14

* Div. X, Paso Robles 24, Monrovia 10