Cullowhee — (WLOS) College athletes will generally stand out in most rooms they enter. It takes a special physical specimen to stand out on a football field full of them, but Western Carolina offensive lineman Ilija Krajnovic (CRYY-no-vich) manages to do just that.
“Obviously the size,” Western Carolina offensive line coach Jeremy King answered of what drew them to the tackle. “The first thing is obviously the size.”
When the huddle breaks and the offense stands up, no.77’s head keeps rising until it looks like almost a half helmet above everyone else’s.
“When I show up to Walmart to go buy something everyone stares at me,” laughed the 6’8, 340lb graduate senior. “They’re like, ‘holy crap.'”
It’s not just his stature that makes Krajnovic different. It’s the path that led him to Cullowhee.
A native of Zrenjanin, Serbia he did not begin playing football until he was in his mid-teens. “Not even close,” he compared Serbian football to American. “Like some regular high school team would beat the sh– out of us.”
Instead of growing up on the gridiron, Krajnovic followed in his older brothers’ footsteps as a kickboxer. “I was a little smaller, and much skinnier,” he grinned. “I started doing really good for my size, and I think that sport really helped me a lot with my athletic ability.”
“Him being a kickboxer definitely shows in that flexibility piece,” agreed King. “I mean for that guy to be 6’8 and his butt can almost touch the ground in a stance, that’s pretty impressive.”
He was also a standout volleyball player, competing on the Serbian U19 volleyball team. “Back home it’s not considered like a girly sport, especially because Serbians are genetically tall,” he explained. “So we have a lot of tall guys who go either to basketball or volleyball.”
However, some problems traverse time zones and hemispheres. Krajnovic saw the children of big-time donors get playing time over more qualified players, so he began searching for a new game.
I just decided that I needed to get into something that would spend my energy and my aggression, that I can do that legally,” he chuckled. “You know, without getting processed in the court and stuff.”
What he found was football, but even that differed from the American version. Whereas in the States players move up through the ranks against those of comparable ages, in Serbia all the players were competing against one another.
“Everyone who’s sixteen-plus, they’re playing,” Krajnovic described. “So at that time I was sixteen and I started playing against grown-ass men. Like guys who are thirty-eight or forty who had kids and a wife.”
Nine months after getting introduced to the game, Krajnovic’s father took out a loan so they could make a 12-hour drive to Berlin, Germany to participate in an identification camp for European prospects. Among the coaches he met was Paul Alexander, who was two years removed from a long stint as the Cincinnati Bengals offensive line coach.
“There’s a funny anecdote,” smiled Krajnovic. “Coach Paul Alexander came up to me to shake my hand and said, ‘You probably know who I am.’ I said nope, sorry I don’t watch NFL.”
At the end of the camp Alexander approached Krajnovic to gauge his genuine interest in making a move to America. “They asked me, ‘Are you serious about going to the States?’ Which I said yes, but deep down I didn’t believe that something like that could happen,” he recalled.
A few days later he was contacted by someone at IMG Academy in Florida and the next month he was landing in Tampa to join their team. From the time he first learned how to line up in a three-point stance to then was less than a year.
From there he earned a scholarship to Boston College where he attended for four years, appearing in ten games for the Eagles. With a year of eligibility left, he was drawn to Western Carolina because of the coaches and the setting.
“I like the atmosphere and I love the location,” he said. “The mountains are really kind of where I’m coming from.”
Krajnovic has earned a starting spot for the Catamounts, and King believes his experience is just as beneficial as his talent.
“Him being able to go and have those experiences with the guys and say, ‘Hey these are some of the things I was able to learn at an FBS program, this is how I was able to take care of my body,'” King said. “Even though we have to do it at a different scale that what they might have been able to do at Boston College, he’s able to implement some of that stuff.”
Krajnovic still has professional aspirations, and believes following his coaches’ instruction will get him to that level. No matter what, football has given him more than he expected when he first began competing against “grown-ass men” six years ago.
“I finished high school, I graduated from Boston College, and now I’m here. So I mean definitely a lot of experience,” he mused. “I grew up at that time, I became a man, I developed my character. So yeah I could say football changed my life.”