Kreikemeier came out of nowhere

[Husker_Power]

BY BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star

Sunday, Feb 03, 2008 - 12:25:36 am CST

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WEST POINT— He was looking for something red, anything red, something with Nebraska on it.

 

Micah Kreikemeier rummaged through drawers. Nothing.

 

He was about to take a trip to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus, tour Memorial Stadium and make conversation with Tom Osborne and Bo Pelini.

 

Surely he had a Husker shirt somewhere.

 

The West Point Central Catholic senior already had been offered and accepted a football scholarship to Nebraska, likely as a linebacker. With that, he had gone from general unknown to suddenly a main character in dinner table conversations.

 

Refs at basketball games were now coming up to him to talk football and his name was being bandied about and misspelled by anonymous posters on Internet message boards. Unfortunately, anonymity can bring with it some cruelty, especially in this day when so much stock is placed on gold stars handed out by recruiting analysts.

 

But Kreikemeier, a Class C-2 player with few stars by his name and only all-state honorable mention, didn't really pay much attention to what people wrote. He knew he could play. Osborne and Pelini thought so. Kansas and Iowa State, too.

 

He kept looking for red. Got to have red. Finally, there was one Nebraska T-shirt, at the very bottom of a drawer.

 

When he held it up, it was too small. It'd been a while since he cared. His enthusiasm for the Husker program had dampened during most of his high school career. Iowa State had started to look pretty good.

 

He wanted to be a Husker fan, tried to be a fan, but you can't force it if it's not there.

 

He wasn't big into Bill Callahan's system. The coaches seemed all business. And Callahan's NFL talk, while surely sweet-sounding to certain recruits, seemed more of a turnoff to a kid who grew up thinking of Memorial Stadium as the big stage. Wasn't it enough of a dream to get a chance to play for Nebraska?

 

It was for a kid in West Point, at least.

 

For whatever disconnect there was, his love for the Huskers started to return in October, especially when he heard Osborne was coming back to NU to be athletic director.

 

"As soon as we found that out, we knew good things were going to happen," said his dad, Keith Kreikemeier, a former Husker walk-on who now operates a feedlot just outside of town.

 

And then came the phone call that December Sunday, 15 minutes after the conclusion of the press conference announcing Pelini as Nebraska's next football coach.

 

Micah looked at the caller ID: OSBORNE, THOMAS.

 

Weeks before the call, the family had a discussion weighing the pros and cons between Nebraska and Iowa State.[/font]

 

The Cyclones were doing well in the conversation.

 

And then his dad asked: "When you were a little kid outside playing, who would you want to play for?"

 

The Huskers. Easy answer.

 

So when Thomas Osborne — yes, that Thomas Osborne — called and asked if Micah would like a scholarship to Nebraska, the teen with the 4.0 GPA didn't need any convincing.

 

"I almost had to ask him to repeat it to make sure I heard it right."

 

***

 

News traveled fast. The Kreikemeier phone kept ringing for days, sometimes asking Jodi Kreikemeier, "Do you know who Micah's mom and dad are?"

 

"Well, that's my son."

 

Micah's name showed up in the Denver Post. One person from West Point told Jodi that she had seen his name in a newspaper in Canada.

 

People wanted to know. Who is this Micah Kreikemeier, arguably the biggest surprise of the Nebraska recruiting class? And how was he discovered?

 

There was help from Dave Ridder, the West Point Central Catholic coach who played for Osborne at NU.

 

Ridder visited Osborne during the week of the Class C-2 state championship game, left film of Micah and expressed that it'd be worth his time to give it a look.

 

"Some of the (criticism) was about, 'He didn't make the all-state teams,'" Ridder says. "No disrespect, but it has a lot to do with people not seeing a lot of these kids play. There are an awfully lot of good players who don't get seen. As far as statistically wise, I know there wasn't anybody in the state that had better stats as far as a rush end."

 

A few days after Ridder delivered the tape, former Husker assistant Bill Busch called Ridder to tell him coaches liked what they saw

 

As Keith Kreikemeier understands it, Osborne had told the previous Husker staff to pick out roughly a dozen Nebraska kids that they thought could play here. The staff eventually narrowed the list to eight, one of them the 6-foot-4, 215-pound Kreikemeier.

 

What you know you'll get out of Micah is hard work, says Ridder. "As Coach Osborne said to me, '(Micah) was the kind of kid we used to take and develop.'"

 

About two weeks before Osborne called, former NU offensive line coach Dennis Wagner visited the Kreikemeiers. They knew then that Micah would have a scholarship offer of some sort from Nebraska.

 

The new staff got in on the evaluating. Keith says he was told some of the new coaches were even looking at the tapes of recruits on the Sunday Pelini was announced as head coach. Micah stuck out.

 

"Osborne's not stupid," Keith says. "He's not just going to give out a scholarship. And he wouldn't do that to a kid if the kid couldn't handle it. He's not going to put him in a situation where he's going to fail."

 

***

 

The people in and around West Point couldn't be more pleased, especially Grandma Dorothy.

 

As much into the Huskers as she is crocheting, she was saying rosaries each day that Micah might end up a Husker.

 

And you should have seen the kids at school the day Pelini and new offensive line coach Barney Cotton walked in. The school isn't much bigger than a fraternity house — three floors, one bathroom for the guys, one for the girls.

 

Faces were peering out of classroom windows. Kids were making up excuses to walk into the main office and get a closer look.

 

"Coach Pelini goes, 'I come in and about 20 people were staring at me,'" Micah says. "That's a first in a small town like this. You don't see people like that here every day."

 

Micah says one of the things he likes most about Pelini is how down-to-earth he is.

 

"He's straightforward in everything he says," Micah says. "He basically said to me the three main rules: Don't get in trouble with the law. Don't be late, and don't ever talk back or anything stupid with me. But he said, 'Screw up any of those and I'll be up your butt.' Fair enough for me."

 

Among other things, the coaches like Micah's smarts. He scored a 30 on the ACT. Harvard was interested in him for football. As NU linebackers coach Mike Ekeler recently reminded Micah, three of the linebacker recruits coming in — Micah, Sean Fisher and Will Compton all have GPAs of 3.8 or higher.

 

And when the Kreikemeiers visited Lincoln recently, Pelini told the family: Don't ever let me find out you were in Lincoln and didn't stop in to say hello. I'll be mad.

 

Eventually, the Kreikemeiers met with Osborne. Keith fondly recalls the conversation.

 

"Osborne goes: I'm glad you're here. I go: No, we're glad you're here."