Lamont Ponton was a ghost, a shadow, a myth. I found myself running in circles as the days and weeks ran together in a blur, chasing after a man who seemed hidden in the shadows.

None of the phone numbers listed for him worked. All the addresses connected to him were outdated. Newspaper clips mentioning his name disappeared after high school.

All of his former teammates spoke of Ponton in nebulous terms. They had seen him around Essex County, but none had spoken to him in ages. They thought he still lived in Montclair. Or maybe it was East Orange. No one could say for certain.

Where had he gone to college? Jim Vigna thought it was Florida A&M. George Wood remembered Alcorn State. A couple mentioned junior college.

But when I checked, there was no inkling of Ponton playing college football.

I traced outward, finding a phone number for a Ponton residence in Montclair. He didn’t live there, a woman who answered told me, but she passed along his number.

I called him March 14 and left a message. He texted back a few hours later: “This is Ponton.”

Finally, I had found him. I told Ponton I’d call him in 45 minutes, and he agreed to the time.

He never answered.

I texted him the next day, trying to set up an interview. He blew it off.

I texted or called on and off for the next two months. He responded to some messages and then stopped altogether. He deftly eluded me, like all those defenders he left in his dust during his playing days.

I went back to the news archives, but not much was there. Soon, I learned why: Ponton’s real first name isn’t Lamont. It’s Erskine.

Erskine Lamont Ponton.

I plugged the name into search engines, and Ponton’s post-high school fate came into startling focus.

His first arrest appeared to happen in February 1994, charged with possession with intent to use drug paraphernalia. Less than three years after graduating from Montclair.

From there it was an endless onslaught of crime. Theft, simple assault, burglary, bad checks, shoplifting.

All together, more than 30 arrests. He even was picked up twice this year, as I was reporting this story.

I pulled his mugshots, searching for a glimpse of his face. In the first one, he’s a young man with bushy hair and a goatee, his angular shoulders still framed with muscle. He’s only a few years removed from the glory days at Woodman Field.

A new mug shot pops up every couple of years, further and further removed from the life he once knew as a football star. In each, Ponton appears increasingly fraught, his face weathered and desperate. The most recent shot, from August, appears to show a single tear trickling down his left cheek.

After the Randolph loss, Sandy Hunter, the longtime Montclair assistant coach, remembered Ponton being “so devastated.” Like he no longer cared about his future. Coaches tried to make arrangements to get Ponton to college. He wasn’t interested.

“We would have coaches come in to see him about going to school, and he just was in such a depressed state,” Hunter said. “He didn’t even show up for some of the meetings. That’s how sad he was. We couldn’t even get him to come to school some days.”

Burton, the Montclair legend, also tried to help. He said he made arrangements for Ponton to meet with administrators and coaches from Kean University about playing football.

Ponton never showed up.

Montclair quarterback Lamont Ponton hands off during a game. (Samir Id-Deen | Star-Ledger file photo) Montclair quarterback Lamont Ponton hands off during a game. (Samir Id-Deen | Star-Ledger file photo)

“That one broke my heart,” Burton said. “He could have been a terrific student-athlete. He took all that brains that he had and went to the other side of the track.”

With no clear answers on what set Ponton on his path of ruin, I drove to Montclair on a sunny, unseasonably warm afternoon in April, heading for the only address I had for him. I pulled in front of a squat, four-story apartment building a couple blocks off downtown.

On the front porch of one of the units, an elderly woman with salt-and-pepper hair stood in gray sweatpants and a Nebraska Cornhuskers hoodie. She held a plastic pink bubble wand in her hand, blowing bubbles for a toddler wearing a bright pink jacket.

I approached and told her I was looking for Lamont Ponton.

“He doesn’t live here,” the woman said. “But I’m his mother.”

Her name was Mary Ann Ponton.

And the little girl playing on the porch was Lamont’s granddaughter. Both she and his daughter lived in the apartment, Mary Ann told me.

I ask if she will tell me about Lamont. Without hesitation, Mary Ann started filling in the gaps.

“He ate and he lived football,” she said. “That was his life, from a very small kid. That’s all he wanted to do, was play football.”

His high school career went smoothly, and he was lauded all over town, she recalled. But, Mary Ann said, the Randolph loss was “the worst thing that ever happened to him, besides my father passing.”

“It was like they won the game, but then in the final seconds, they set the clock back and he lost the game,” she said. “That was a downer for him.”

Mary Ann said Lamont went to college briefly in Oklahoma, but she’s not sure where and he didn’t last long.

From there, Mary Ann said Lamont stuck around Montclair, coached youth football for a while and “then he just went off the deep end.”

When I asked what she meant, she responded: “Messing with drugs.”

It’s been his whole life since he left high school, she said. Drugs and jail. Jail and drugs. One day he was the star quarterback on the best team in New Jersey, the pride of Montclair; the next he was a forgotten man in the throes of addiction.

“I’m not going to blame it on football (or) losing the game,” she said. “I guess that’s just something that he was going to do. I used to blame myself, but then I said, ‘No. I had nothing to do with it. I gave you a life that you could live.’ Apparently, somebody out in the streets had a better life than I could give him.”

I asked Mary Ann if winning the game may have changed how Lamont’s life unfolded. If the fame might have been a springboard to something better. She responded quickly and said, “You can’t say. That’s something that you can’t say.”

Then, she slowed down and stopped, pondering the question. It rolled around her head.

She started again.

“I really can’t answer,” Mary Ann said. “It could have.”

Mary Ann spoke to me for about 30 minutes, smiling at some of the good memories of her son, frowning at others. She said he lives in East Orange, but she’s not sure where. He stops by the apartment in Montclair occasionally, but not on any particular schedule. She vowed to tell Lamont I came looking for him and to call me.

I thanked Mary Ann for her time, and turned to leave. Before I reached the sidewalk, she called out, stopping me one final time. Cars on the street whooshed past as her wistful eyes locked on mine.

Lamont’s probably avoiding me for a reason, Mary Ann said.

He doesn’t want to be found.

Then, she turned, headed back inside her apartment and closed the door.