Before George Karlaftis was Super Bowl bound, he was a kid in West Lafayette from another country, learning a new game. Take a look back at this fun one from the archives, before he went on to star at Purdue:
WEST LAFAYETTE — George Karlaftis had barely played a down of football when he said he would play in the NFL.Karlaftis didn’t so much “suck” as much as he didn’t understand the game.
On the desk of his downstairs bedroom is a mountain of mail from some of the most prestigious college football programs in the country. In that same room, where his mother allows him to express his creativity, are inspirational quotes and Bible verses scribbled on the wall. “Kids were raised tougher and forced to mature more rapidly than kids" in the United States, he recalled. “You have more of a rough childhood than anything. Here, life is way simpler and almost stress free compared to what it is in Athens.”
He carried his father’s frame with big broad shoulders and seemingly nonstop growth and developed a knack for throwing shot put. At age 13, he was competing for Greece’s 16-and-under national water polo team that placed third at the 2014 world championships.He was training for water polo in the home pool when his mom began banging on the door. She was with George’s aunt and his father’s best friend.“Inside of me, I said I hope it is not my dad,” George recalled.
“Within 10 days, I knew I was leaving,” Amy said from the dinner table of her West Lafayette home. “I had lived there for 16 years at that point, and I knew I had a good family base and good friends, but my family was here. “When we got here, Yanni was in sixth grade and his first year , they would practice Little Gridiron and he would sit outside my parents’ house with his football gear on waiting to go across the street,” Amy said.Matt Karlaftis was a track-and-field star at Miami when the football coach convinced him to join as a walk-on. With his Greek background, he knew very little about the game and was learning it firsthand with one of the top football teams in the country.
Football was a foreign concept when George decided to give it a try, but that wasn’t even the most difficult adaptation. George had a good eighth grade season and joined an AAU team. He wound up starting as a high school freshman for the varsity team and starring for the Red Devils on the hardwood just like his uncles, aunt and mother had. As a sophomore he was the center for a sectional championship team, averaging 9.3 points and 7.1 rebounds per game.
“He holds the bat with one hand,” Fry said. “I am pitching and slow tossing, and he looks like a cave man with a club.”That’s when Fry saw how quick and athletic George was, especially for his size. “Schools aren’t going to recruit you without film. I didn’t really have any film,” George said. “IU did because I went to their camp and I won their 40-yard dash as a defensive lineman. They were like, ‘Whoa.’”
“Last year was a process,” Fry said. “There were times he looked like a world beater and there were times he was trying to learn and didn’t do too well. He is wet behind the ears and hadn’t had the reps everyone else had.”An interesting dynamic came when George’s family moved to West Lafayette. Chike Okeafor moved back to his hometown. Okeafor was a star for the Red Devils in the early 1990s and went on to play 10 years as a defensive end in the National Football League.
“We feel like he’s got an advantage over any offensive tackle,” Fry said. “Teams planning on running some zone and doing some drop back passing, we feel like we can just let him go. We don’t want to pack his head full of rules. We just want him to be an athlete and play fast, and he’s been good when he’s done that.”He was invited to January’s U.S. Army All-American combine.
“I wish there was a recipe I could give him to handle everything that is going on,” Amy said. “If it was just one reporter per school, then it wouldn’t be an issue. But when people are messaging you all the time and you feel obligated to respond …”
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