Straton
October 21, 2015 | Athletics
By Bob Carskadon
HailStateBEAT
Note: Every day this week, we will recognize a member of the 2015 Mississippi State Sports Hall of Fame Class. The class will be formally inducted at a banquet Thursday night at the MSU M-Club and then recognized during the MSU-Kentucky game Saturday in Davis Wade Stadium.
For 43 years, Straton Karatassos, known to virtually everyone as Strat, has been responsible for the livelihood of Mississippi State athletics in some form or fashion. When he began his career at MSU, he was in grad school and one of only two athletic trainers in the department tasked with the physical well-being of State's athletes, a job he held for the better part of two decades.
23 years ago, Karatassos switched to the development side of athletics when he joined the Bulldog Club, helping ensure the department had the money necessary to survive and helping alumni to maintain their connection to the school they love so much.
His contributions to the successes of MSU athletics since 1973 are felt by all, whether in tangible form or not. Those decades of service, 43 years of relationships, healing bodies and bettering the state of athletics, are why Karatassos is being inducted this weekend into the MSU Sports Hall of Fame.
They are also why Wayne Madkin, the chairman of the MSU Sports Hall of Fame committee, said few choices have ever been as easy or as obvious.
"If you had a Mississippi State dictionary," Madkin said, "Strat's picture would be on the cover. He's the model of how you treat people and how you treat your student-athletes. There has never been a time in my life of knowing Strat that he doesn't genuinely care about the student-athletes and the people around him. That goes a long way."
Karatassos, a native of Savannah, Georgia, went to school at Georgia Southern, where he traveled with their baseball team and head coach Ron Polk to an NCAA Regional in Starkville the summer of 1973. He still remembers the trip, eating meals in McCarthy Gym and playing against a program just a few years away from becoming a national power. But it was Karatassos, Polk and GSU who won the Regional, advancing to Omaha and the College World Series. From there, Karatassos was planning to go to grad school in Indiana and start his career there. Then out of the blue, he got a call from someone he had met at MSU, someone who was offering him a job and a scholarship to pay for the rest of his education.
It wasn't what Karatassos had been planning on, but it was a hard offer to turn down. Besides, he thought, he'd just stay there for a year and move on to bigger and better. That was the plan, anyway.
But the man who hired him knew better. The first week Karatassos was in Starkville, he went to dinner at the home of the one man there he knew.
"Strat," the man named Doug told him, "I think you'll be here a long time and marry a Southern Baptist from the delta."
"You're crazy," Karatassos responded. "I'm a Greek Orthodox and I'm a city boy. That's not gonna happen."
Shortly after, he met Harriet, his Southern Baptist belle, and here he is 43 years later, in the same town at the same university he expected to be a short pit stop on the journey of his life.
"It's been a great ride," Karatassos said. "I hope there's still a few more miles to travel on it."
His career has been spent working on whatever task came to him, but as Madkin explained, it's the relationships with people that make Karatassos so memorable and so loved, far more than any healed knee or athletic gift secured.
The same applies to Karatassos' memories of the last four decades. Professional successes are great, certainly, but it's been the people that make him excited to wake up every morning and go to work every day.
"It's definitely the people," Karatassos said. "I'd like it even more if I didn't have to ask some of them for money. The people are our greatest strength. I know everybody has great people and generous people, but it just seems to me like we have a bounty of them. Even the ones who can't give, they give sometimes until hurts. They love this place."
That's part of what makes him miss his days as a trainer. They were long days, to be sure. Hard and taxing. But the relationships formed in the training room, the trust built between players on the training table with the man tasked to bring them back to health, is something that can be hard to find anywhere else in life. That trust forms a bond and the countless hours form an intimacy.
Karatassos would never give up or exchange what he has now, working with friends old and new through his role in the Bulldog Club. But, he does admit, those days traveling with the team and working with the players are hard to replace.
"I see them on the field or I see them walking by and I wish I were a part of their lives," he said. "It's different. I've traded the players for a lot of great friends and a lot of people who are very supportive of this university and love this university like I do."
That connection to two worlds has offered Karatassos a unique perspective. As a trainer, he remembers the road trips, when he knew there would be certain fans there for every game, no matter the sport. He would recognize families, individuals and groups of friends. He'd be happy to see them, but thought little at the time of the commitment they were making to support MSU. After all, it was easy for him. He would show up, get on the plane, walk into his hotel, be served every meal and fly home without ever reaching in his pocket.
It's why he says now he wishes he could impart upon coaches and players how much their fans care about them, how much MSU means to them that they spend whatever money they work for to cheer on their Bulldogs, be it at home or away.
It's a connection few have the relevant experience to make, but Karatassos sees it and cherishes it.
"Strat connects a lot of people," said Scott Stricklin, MSU's Director of Athletics. "He's had two careers here, a trainer then in development. He's probably as popular as any staff member that's ever come through here. He's great with people and really has a way of making people feel important. That's probably why the athletes responded to him when he was a trainer and I know it's the reason Bulldog Club members respond so well to him today."
The reason Karatassos does such a good job of making people feel important is because they truly are important to him. He loves people.
Karatassos had two things he always told his athletes when he was a trainer: he wanted them to leave with a sweet taste in their mouth, and he wanted them to get their degree.
That's why one of the best moments Karatassos has had came through a text message conversation with Eric Moulds, the former MSU and NFL wide receiver who is also being inducted into the MSU Sports Hall of Fame this weekend.
Years after Moulds retired from the NFL, once cell phone technology had advanced enough for easy conversation and sharing, Moulds sent a text message to Karatassos saying he had a Christmas present for him. Just as Karatassos began wondering what it could be, a second message came through – it was a picture of Moulds' diploma.
It took longer than he expected, but Moulds had finally graduated from Mississippi State, just as he had promised Karatassos he would some 20 years before.
"That was priceless for me," Karatassos said. "You can't take those things away from people."
The story is just one of hundreds, thousands, really, that involve Karatassos touching and bettering the lives of those around him, those who love MSU. 43 years of friends, of students and alumni, of family of the blood and Bulldog variety, have been grateful for their relationship with Karatassos.
Yet, he says, "I'm the lucky one."
Karatassos and the other four inductees will be honored before MSU's football game against Kentucky on Saturday night. For more information on the MSU Sports Hall of Fame, visit www.msumclub.org.
