Stone is back with a purpose

Jerry Stone was gone with the wins.

Now you see them, now you don’t.

It was late September and the Lakewood High football team, paced by its star running back, was 4-0. Then it was learned that he was ineligible, and the victories were forfeited.

Stone needed to attain two Bs in summer-school classes to maintain his eligibility, but he thought he only needed to pass his classes.

So when Stone achieved passing grades and a clerical error left him off the initial ineligibility sheet distributed to Coach Thadd MacNeal, the Lancers thought they were good to go.

Instead, the forfeits sunk Lakewood to the bottom of the Moore League standings.

“He took it real hard,” quarterback Jesse Scroggins said of Stone. “For a while he didn’t even want to go to practice.”

But Stone resisted the urge to vanish and has pulled quite a reappearing act since regaining his eligibility last month.

The 5-foot-11, 196-pound junior has diversified the Lancers’ offensive attack while averaging 200 yards rushing during two playoff victories.

“I felt like I had a lot to prove, sitting out for the month,” Stone said.

Long Beach Poly Coach Raul Lara said his team now has “two things to worry about” Friday at Cerritos College when the top-seeded Jackrabbits (12-0) play Lakewood (6-6) in a Pac-5 Division semifinal. Stone didn’t play during the Jackrabbits’ 32-15 victory over the Lancers in October.

“I don’t know how much of a difference [Stone] would have made, but I’m pretty sure it would have made their offense more balanced,” Lara said. “We knew they would be one-dimensional so we pretty much only worried about Scroggins.”

Lakewood is a different team with both Stone and Scroggins in the backfield, winning all eight games -- on the field, at least -- in which they have played together. Stone has been especially unstoppable in the postseason, scoring two touchdowns during a 35-34 overtime win over fourth-seeded Anaheim Servite and notching three more scores in a 28-7 rout of Mission Viejo.

But Poly presents a whole different challenge. Lakewood has not beaten its Moore League rival since 1982, when Lara was a junior linebacker for the Jackrabbits.

“They’re Mt. Everest, and we’re trying to climb it,” MacNeal said.

Scroggins said he felt “a little naked” going into the Lancers’ first game against Poly without Stone, who had averaged 153 yards rushing a game in the team’s 4-0 start.

“Everything starts with the run for us,” said Scroggins, who passed for 195 yards and two touchdowns against Poly but couldn’t overcome a defense formulated to stop him.

Lara says he believes teams long overshadowed by rivals can be confronted by mental blocks like the one the Jackrabbits faced going into the 1997 Division I title game against Santa Ana Mater Dei.

The Monarchs had walloped the Jackrabbits, 42-13, in a semifinal the previous year and were riding a 27-game winning streak.

“We knew Mater Dei was one of the top teams in the nation and we wanted to be one,” Lara said. “So if you want to do that, you have to knock them off.”

Poly defeated the Monarchs, 28-25, and since then has widely been considered among the top handful of programs in the Southern Section.

It’s an ascent Lakewood would like to mimic behind a core of juniors that includes Stone, Scroggins and receiver Kevin Anderson.

“We’re not intimidated,” Stone said of the Jackrabbits. “They’re 15-, 16-, 17-year-old kids, just like we are.”

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ben.bolch@latimes.com