BLAZING TRAILS : After Pioneering Career at Obscure CES, Littlejohn hopes Colleges Come Calling.

Marcus Littlejohn knows that his legacy at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies is secure. He’s a pioneering athlete at the small magnet school in Reseda, the best player on the first team in school history to play in a “real” basketball league.

Littlejohn, a 6-foot-1 senior guard, averaged 25.3 points a game in the Knights’ first season since stepping out of the obscurity of the City Section’s Magnet League. After the team compiled a four-year record of 78-6, the Knights earned a promotion to the City 3-A Division and membership in the Northeast League. CES has averaged nearly 20 wins a season the past four years but struggled to a 9-11 record this season, including a 4-8 mark and a fourth-place finish in the five-team Northeast League. In its first crack at the so-called big time, CES missed the playoff cut.

Still, the Knights have arrived, punctuating their emergence as a legitimate 3-A team with a 62-61 upset of league champion Wilson last week.

“I’ve really been happy here and I hope I’ll be remembered as a pioneer,” Littlejohn said.

But that doesn’t mean he didn’t try to leave CES, a school of 1,500 students from the fourth through the 12th grades that is part of the L. A. Unified School District’s voluntary integration program. Littlejohn, who lives in the Fairfax area of Los Angeles, entered CES as a seventh-grader and nearly left the school before his junior year.

After the Knights failed to gain admittance to a 3-A league two years ago, Littlejohn became disheartened and considered a time-honored option at CES. The Knights always have drawn talented basketball players but they left for mainstream schools once they reached ninth grade. Former CES students include Anthony Cook, who went to Van Nuys and then the University of Arizona, Jason Mathews (St. Monica, Pittsburgh) and Andre Durity (Fairfax, St. Mary’s).

Littlejohn hoped to travel similar territory and considered transferring to Taft or El Camino Real. Working out the logistics through the school district’s Permits With Transportation program proved easier than persuading Littlejohn’s grandmother.

Mable Garrett has raised Littlejohn since he arrived in Los Angeles from Oklahoma as a 2-year-old suffering from asthma. Both the climate and his grandmother suited him, so he never rejoined his mother, who now lives in Dallas.

Garrett insisted that Littlejohn attend a magnet school but when he requested the transfer she agreed to consider it. But not for long. It was back to CES.

“I was really disappointed at first,” Littlejohn said. “I wanted to go to Taft or ECR because they were big schools in established leagues. They play in front of scouts and college coaches and I thought I would get some exposure.”

Littlejohn returned to CES for his junior and senior years and now that his high school career is over, he harbors no regrets academically or socially about staying at CES. But he faces major doubts about his basketball future.

Despite impressive numbers, no colleges have shown interest in him. After averaging 33 points as a junior, his scoring suffered only slightly at the 3-A level this season. He scored 505 points in 20 games and finished with a flourish, scoring 32, 30 and 42 points in his final three games. He also had a 40-point game in a December tournament against St. Monica, a traditional Southern Section power that has advanced to the second round of the Division 5-AA playoffs.

Littlejohn also averaged five assists and 9.5 rebounds a game despite playing guard. He converted 59% of his field-goal attempts and was even better from three-point territory, making 35 of 47, a stunning 74.5%.

CES Coach Mac Becker, who has an obvious bias, calls Littlejohn “the biggest sleeper in Southern California.”

Jeff Davis, El Camino Real’s assistant coach, offers only a slightly more tempered appraisal.

“He’s definitely a Division I player,” he said. “We need a Marcus Littlejohn. If some college wants to know about him, I’ll recommend him.”

Despite the example of Mitchell Butler, who signed with UCLA despite playing at tiny Oakwood School in North Hollywood, Littlejohn fears that his experience at a small school holds him back. And he has company.

“He’s playing in a league where he stands out and if he played at the 4-A level he might not score as many points,” Taft Coach Jim Woodard said. “But he might have developed more if he played at this level.”

Pete Cassidy, coach of Cal State Northridge’s Division II program, hasn’t recruited Littlejohn, either.

“If he played against Cleveland all the time, his skills would be better. If you’re always doing the same things and getting away with it and then someone takes that away, what do you do? It’s a big jump from CES to a four-year school.”

Cassidy has seen that jump firsthand. Northridge offered Dannton Jackson a scholarship last year, making the 6-foot-5 forward the first CES graduate to sign a national letter of intent. Jackson, who is redshirting this season, understands what Littlejohn is going through.

“Last year I was in the same spot as Marcus,” he said. “I was really scared and thought I wasn’t going to get a scholarship. I thought I would never make it.

“I didn’t want to go to a junior college because Sherman Oaks was home. I wanted to find another home right away.”

Like Littlejohn, Jackson considered leaving CES. He grew up in Reseda and always dreamed of playing for Cleveland.

“I kept seeing my friends leave and have success somewhere else,” he said. “I thought of transferring but my parents and I thought that CES was the place to be.”

Recruiting doubts aside, Littlejohn has reached the same conclusion. Even if he winds up at a junior college next season, he’ll always have his CES memories. Sherman Oaks is the kind of school that seems to breed loyalty.

“It’s like a . . . family here,” he said. “The teachers are close to you and they care about you. And I know practically everybody. There are only two new students in the senior class.

“I’m satisfied with what I accomplished here. I can say I started something. We can get people to want to come here and play basketball.”