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.
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