George Karlaftis' path to football stardom was far from simple

More: Several freshmen may play next season

Wednesday afternoon, Purdue coach Jeff Brohm, making his first public comments about what could prove to be a transformative recruiting class, singled out George Karlaftis as a potential impact player.

Now.

Karlaftis is only 17 years old, young for his grade.

Yet, judging by his soon-to-be coach's comments, his uncommon physical ability and the fact that Purdue is actually moving a would-be returning starter, Giovanni Reviere, out of his projected position, a realistic scenario could see Karlaftis exiting this spring, and opening his Purdue career months later, as a starter, as a freshman defensive lineman on a Big Ten roster.

“Our goal for him is to make sure that we make him a difference-maker as fast as we can," Brohm said.

That outcome would stand in the starkest contrast possible to his last first day in uniform, not just his first game for West Lafayette, but his first game, period.

It was then, in 2014, when Karlaftis first played football — "American football" as he grew up knowing it, not particularly fondly — in a formal setting. This was eighth grade, and at about 6-foot-2, 190 pounds back then, Karlaftis was already bigger and faster and more explosive than the pre-teens lining up across from him, but the difference between him and them was this: They'd been playing football in America while he was playing water polo in the Mediterranean. And that says nothing of the fact that Karlaftis had been speaking primarily Greek for much of his childhood.

It was October of 2014, and Karlaftis had only committed to trying football mid-season after coming to the U.S. a month into the school year. It was the West Central Junior Conference eighth-grade title game in which he debuted, after he'd practiced 10 times in full gear to meet participation requirements.

In the second quarter, on his first snap lining up at nose tackle, Karlaftis jumped off-side.

On his next snap, he blew past the center, into the opponent's backfield, then froze, as the play was run in the opposite direction.

“He’s notorious for chewing on his mouthpiece and talking," said West Side head coach Shane Fry, who was present at the game with his staff that day. "He said, ‘Coach, I don’t understand what to do. I got past the center, and that was easy, but what do I do next?’”

That was Karlaftis' football IQ at that point. He had none.

“I thought when you got tackled you could just get back up and keep running," Karlaftis said. "Like in rugby.”

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Obviously, those days are long behind Karlaftis, as the (basically) new American back then is now an All-American today.

But those days very nearly didn't happen, perhaps the most interesting part of Karlaftis' story being that he now stars in a sport he once feared.

It was June 4 of 2014 that Matt Karlaftis, father to George and his three siblings, died suddenly, struck down by a heart attack. He was just 44.

Soon thereafter, Amy Karlaftis and her four children left Athens for her native West Lafayette, where she'd grown up and Matt had received an advanced degree from Purdue. George remained in Greece for a few extra months to finish out a stint with Greece's national water polo team.

Once Karlaftis arrived that fall, long-time West Lafayette coach Jon Speaker reached out. He'd known then-Amy Weida since they were kids.

“I might have casually mentioned to Amy, ‘Hey, if George is interested in playing football, let us know and we’ll help him out,’" Speaker said. "When George got here, his grandfather showed up in my office, with George, unannounced, and we talked through it and agreed that I’d take him to junior high practice. This was at 11 o’clock in the afternoon. Fast forward to 3:30 and I go to pick him up and take him down there, and he wants no part of it. He’d decided in those three or four hours that he was done and he wasn’t going to play. I said, ‘OK, no problem.’

“A couple days later, I get a call from his mom, and she says he wants to try football again. So I go over and I remember sitting there on the stairs in his family’s house just talking to his mom while George sat their contemplating it for the second time, and decided he didn’t want to play football.”

At the time of his death, Dr. Matthew Karlaftis was an accomplished academic and educator, a professor in civil engineering at the National Technical University of Athens. He'd received his P.h.D from Purdue. His specialty was transportation.

But years earlier, he too was an athlete.

He went to the University of Miami to be part of its track and field program, to throw javelin, a talent passed down to George, now a state champion several times over in the shot put.

At some point during his time at Miami, between 1990-94, Matt Karlaftis was urged to try football, to walk on with the Hurricanes. This was back at the height of "The U.," at that time coached by Dennis Erickson after Jimmie Johnson left for the Cowboys, and when Matt Karlaftis put on his practice gear, he did so alongside the likes of Darrin Smith, Lamar Thomas, Leon Searcy, Dwayne Johnson (i.e. The Rock) and Heisman-winning quarterback Gino Torretta.

Memorable as those days could have been, Matt Karlaftis' memories turned him away from the game altogether.

A gruesome head injury — sustained after his helmet came off – required an extensive surgery and left him scarred.

"American football, you'll never play that game," Amy Karlaftis now remembers as her late husband's message to his young boys, George, Yanni and Niko.

George had no intention.

Amy Karlaftis believes he intended to live out his father's message in part to set an example for his younger brothers, but also because he was legitimately uneasy about the sport. He'd not only heard his father's words, but he'd seen that scar that stretched from one side of his father's head to the other, where they'd put the metal plate in.

But in time, George Karlaftis came to like football.

He attended games and cheered for West Side's teams, even painted his face red.

His family wanted him to play.

Amy told him that Matt's injury was a terrible accident that wouldn't happen to him.

“He and I had many talks about how his dad would want him to do what made him happy," Amy Karlaftis said, "and if he knew how much football had changed, he’d be OK with him playing."

George Karlaftis says now that back then, he took comfort in the advanced equipment available to him that his father didn't have at the time of his injury.

He also admits that his friends really wanted him to play, too.

“Finally, it was close to the end of the season in eighth grade and he said, ‘I want to go,’" Amy Karlaftis said. "I said, ‘Don’t make a fool out of me and make me tell the coaches you’re coming if you’re not going to go.’”

He went.

"The third time," Speaker said, "it stuck."

Since, the kid who once didn't know what to do unblocked in the backfield has figured that part out, and a lot more.

"It's indescribable how far he's come," Fry said.

He's one of the top players in the country, an All-America-caliber player who could have gone literally to any school in the country. That's not overstatement. The list of prominent schools — regardless of location — that didn't offer Karlaftis a scholarship is a short one, and suffice to say, had those schools had reason to think they could get him, they'd have offered.

Things resolved themselves quickly.

Purdue likely wouldn't have gotten so much as an extended look from Karlaftis had Brohm and his staff not energized a moribund program upon their arrival two Decembers ago. That momentum coupled with significant family connections to the school — Karlaftis' uncle's middle name is literally "Purdue" — and reasons to remain home made this an open-and-shut case for the school whose stadium sits a little more than a half mile from the player's school. Karlaftis committed last September over Michigan and Notre Dame primarily; one-time dream school Miami wanted him, but was probably just too far. It was an eye-opening development not just in that a player that heavily recruited committed to Purdue, but that he did so so quickly.

Now, Purdue's getting one of the best players in the country, a state champion this season, one with all the physical tools imaginable, a rapidly advancing breadth of knowledge and some important mentors. He's been trained for years now by former West Lafayette, Purdue and NFL standout Chike Okeafor and former Purdue and NFL defensive tackle Matt Mitrione, now a star in the MMA world.

"There is no ceiling to what he's capable of," Okeafor said.

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