Star on the Field Grows Into a Man

Since arriving from Texas five years ago, Marlon Lucky has been known as a respectful, considerate, trustworthy teenager.

Coaches and teammates at North Hollywood High swear by him, and not just because he’s the best football player on campus and one of the top running backs in the City Section.

“He’s just a great kid,” Coach Brad Ratcliff said.

It makes Lucky’s earlier life in Texas seem implausible.

He was one of five children living with his mother in Dallas. He loved football, but he didn’t respect authority. He was a 12-year-old who thought he knew everything.

“I didn’t listen to nobody,” he said. “I was pretty bad.”

Family problems forced his mother to relinquish custody of her four sons and one daughter. Lucky ended up moving in with his uncle Stanley Joseph in North Hollywood. Rules were set, expectations established.

“He was a wonderful kid growing up without structure,” Stanley said. “He knew he had to do a 360 [degree turn].”

As Lucky entered his teenage years, his personality changed.

“My uncle is on my back,” he said. “I know what he tells me is right, so I follow what he’s saying.”

Even as he has become a football standout at North Hollywood, Lucky has never strayed from the straight and narrow path of his new start.

Last season as a sophomore, he rushed for 1,067 yards and scored 13 touchdowns. This season, the 6-foot, 200-pound tailback rushed for more than 100 yards in nine of his 10 games and finished with 1,772 yards and 30 touchdowns.

He combines speed with a punishing running style that can exhaust defenders trying to tackle him. When the ball is in his hands, Lucky’s philosophy is simple. “I see the end zone all the time,” he said.

Never was Lucky more impressive than in a Sunset Six League game against champion Van Nuys Grant. He rushed for 336 yards, scored five touchdowns, played defense, returned punts and kickoffs, and was the kicker. North Hollywood lost the game, 37-33, but an exhausted Lucky earned respect from teammates and opponents alike.

“Football is life for me,” he said. “If I don’t play football, I don’t know what I’d do.”

This year, Lucky had the choice of returning to Dallas to rejoin his mother but decided to stay.

“I’m happy now because when I was in Texas, I didn’t think I’d make it in life,” he said. “When I came out here, I had a chance. I stopped everything I was doing and focused on football and school.”

In the Sunset Six League title decider against Grant, Lucky had an individual duel with the Lancers’ top running back, Anthony Dickson. Dickson was ejected in the fourth quarter after picking up his second unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for taunting. Lucky kept his mouth shut and let his performance do the talking.

That’s the kind of person Lucky has become at age 17.

“He needed someone in his corner,” his uncle said. “I let him grow up to be himself, as long as he was doing the right things.”

Said Lucky: “I’m really happy. I see myself making it.”

Lucky’s season ended last week in a City Invitational playoff loss to Locke, but Lucky said that on Thanksgiving, he’d be thankful “for coming to California and changing my life.”

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Ryan Wolfe of Newhall Hart has pulled off one of the fastest comebacks from anterior cruciate ligament surgery in recent years. Wolfe returned to the football field on Friday night, only four months and 11 days after the knee surgery.

He caught three passes for 84 yards, including a touchdown, while being limited to 15 plays.

“It felt normal,” Wolfe said of his knee.

The typical recovery time from ACL surgery can be six to eight months.

Wolfe’s doctor gave him clearance to play, but it was up to his mother, Mickie, to make the decision.

After consulting with the doctor and Hart coaches and listening to her son, she decided that the small risk that he could re-injure his knee should not prevent him from playing.

“Medically, he was strong enough [to return], but it was [Ryan’s] talking us into it,” she said.

How much Wolfe participates in the playoffs in the coming weeks will be determined week to week.

Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.