“There’s this huge guy in your room, Mr. Kraft,” he stammered, perhaps wondering if the resource officer needed to be called on the double.

Kraft took a deep breath and opened the door anyway. Then he spotted his 6-foot-7, 290-pound mystery visitor and his jaw dropped like a Daniel Moore curveball.

“John Milem?” whispered a stunned Kraft, staring at a kid two inches taller and nearly 100 muscular pounds heavier than the one he remembered. “Hey Johnny, how ya doing?”

Milem, West Rowan Class of ‘93, beamed. It was nice to be remembered after a seven-year absence.

“We had ourselves a nice little reunion,” says Kraft. “It’s always good to see a kid come back to home base. It means a lot.”

Then Milem told Kraft the reason for his surprise appearance. He’d given Kraft’s name to the NFL as a character reference and, if he didn’t mind, they were gonna be sending Skip some forms to fill out.

Kraft responded with a puzzled, “Say what?”

“Skip,” said Milem with a grin, “I’m gonna get drafted.”

A lot of people helped Milem get from here to there. The long list includes the Marines, his parents, NFL friends Shannon Myers and Mike Morton, Ron Raper (West’s head coach during his high school years) and Lenoir-Rhyne coach Bill Hart.

And Kraft should be somewhere near the top of that list.

Say what?

Wasn’t Kraft the Falcon baseball coach before resigning after the ‘99 season? Yes, but he was also a football assistant for nine years. And for a couple of those years, he helped coach a lanky defensive lineman/tight end named Milem.

“Skip is the one who taught me to play defensive end,” said Milem. “I think a lot of him. I owe a lot to him.”

n

It’s fair to say that Kraft and Milem didn’t always see eye-to-eye during Milem’s high school days — and not just because Milem stood 6-5 as a prep senior.

Milem wasn’t just hearing the beat of a different drummer, he was listening to a whole different percussion section. Athletics were his thing and he had talent, but things weren’t clicking. As a result, he was struggling to find his niche in school.

“No question, John wanted to perform,” said Raper, whose wishbone team went 3-7 Milem’s senior year. “He’s a kid you look back on fondly because he worked so hard. You could see his potential, but in high school, his body was still ahead of his mind.”

“John was a kid who honestly had to fight for a starting position each week,” said Kraft. “He was spirited. He had a nose for the football and he got excited on Friday nights, but he wasn’t a kid who got a lot of honors. He wasn’t all-conference, all-county, anything like that.”

Kraft remembers Milem as a kid whose future actually looked brightest on the baseball diamond.

“I wasn’t sure football was his thing back then,” laughs Kraft. “I liked him as a pitcher. He had a real presence coming off that mound.”

When Milem graduated from West, he enrolled at Mars Hill.

“They were willing to take him based on potential,” remembers Raper. “They figured he’d grow some more.”

The Lions red-shirted Milem in the fall of ‘93 and by the spring of ‘94, he felt he needed a change of direction. He enlisted in the Marine Corps. That’s where he grew another two inches, began to fill out and got serious about body-building.

“I saw him after he got out of the Marines (in ‘96) and was just amazed,” said Raper. “Sometimes it happens.

Milem worked hard to make himself massive. He worked even harder the past couple of years to make himself mobile. His time in the 40-yard dash improved from 5.4 to 4.7 in the past 18 months.

That speed and the favorable impression he made on scouts with his solid citizenship and “Yes, sir” attitude got him on draft lists, despite his limited experience on the field.

n

Kraft sat by the pond behind his house the night of the NFL Draft, watched his daughter pull two fish from the water in a matter of minutes and wondered which was the bigger miracle — his daughter, the future BassMaster, or Milem, the pro football player.

It’s close, but give a narrow nod to Milem. Most kids who reach the NFL were dominant players in high school. Milem wasn’t anywhere close to dominant. Mostly, he was just a big kid who hung in there and decided to outwork everyone else.

“Any kid deserves this, John does,” says Kraft, shaking his head. “It hasn’t been a cakewalk for him. You know, I don’t think any of us at West ever imagined John as an NFL player. Except for one person. That was John. He believed it.”

And the way Milem sees it, Kraft was the first guy who really believed in him, who pushed him and wouldn’t let him be content with being ordinary.

“You wonder sometimes,” said Kraft, “how much influence you have on kids. Sometimes, you don’t think you’re getting through to them at all. Some kids blossom late. Sometimes that light doesn’t come on for a number of years down the road.”

That light came on for Milem after he left Mount Ulla, and now his future could hardly be brighter.