By Mike LondonSalisbury Post
SALISBURY – Skip Kraft’s last day on his last job will be Thursday, April 2.
This will be the third “retirement” for Kraft, who previously has said bittersweet farewells to West Rowan High, where he spent 22 years, and Southeast Middle School, where he had an eight-year run in administration.
Kraft’s latest step-down and step-back at age 65 will be from Rowan/Cabarrus Vocational Opportunities, a non-profit that provides vocational training and employment for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities.
Kraft considers himself one of the luckier men in the world. He’s never had a job he didn’t enjoy. He’s never been fired or dismissed or laid off. His job departures have been his decisions. He’s always instinctively known when it was time to move on to the next phase of life.
“I’m not saying there weren’t some challenging days,” Kraft said. “But there was never a day I showed up for work wishing I was somewhere else. You look for the bad in people, and you’ll definitely find it. I always chose to look for the good.”
Kraft is not going to become a couch potato in the years ahead, but he’ll be able to slow down a bit from a life that has included too many 12-hour work days. In his 14 years as a baseball coach at West Rowan, he didn’t see much of his wife (Lisa) and their three children (Elizabeth, Julia and Louis) from February to June.
“I’m not a guy who is looking for a retirement story,” Kraft said. “All I’ve done is try to recognize that every human being is dealing with a lot. Everyone is carrying something. I did my best to help the people I came into contact with carry their load. As a society, we all need to do a better job of taking care of each other, and I’ve done my best. What changes for me after Thursday is I’m going to be able to enjoy life and enjoy my family in ways that I’ve never had a chance to before. It’s going to be nice to be able to set my own schedule for the first time.”
While he’s universally known as “Skip,” Kraft’s birth certificate identifies him as Louis Edward Kraft IV. His father, Louis Edward Kraft III, worked for DuPont, a chemical company, in Delaware. Skip was a good high school athlete, and after he graduated, he was determined to find warmer weather to play ball in. It’s not much fun pitching with snowflakes swirling around.
“I went on a tour of the South to several colleges for baseball and football,” he said. “Catawba College is the place where it just felt right.”
He pitched for the baseball Indians, but education always was his priority. Kraft worked for a bachelor’s degree in special education and adaptive physical education.
Kraft’s first coaching efforts weren’t on a baseball field. They were in a program for swimmers with disabilities at the local YMCA.
Kraft tells the story that he was packing up his belongings, getting ready to leave Catawba and Salisbury after graduation, when his phone rang. West Rowan had a job opening for a special education teacher. So Kraft headed to West for an interview with principal Joe Lyerly.
“I was prepared to be grilled about my philosophy of education,” Kraft said, chuckling at a fond memory. “But the first thing Joe Lyerly says is, ‘What do you know about cheerleading? Cheerleader advisor comes with this job.'”
Kraft’s knowledge of cheerleading when he was hired could have been placed in a thimble and he had hoped to coach baseball when he landed his first teaching job, but he liked Lyerly and he liked West Rowan. He accepted the job as special education teacher/cheerleader advisor. That was back in 1982. His foot was in the door. They also made him an assistant football coach.
“I can always tell people that my first pro athlete was a Carolina Panthers cheerleader,” Kraft said.
Kraft married his Catawba sweetheart in the summer of 1984. The 1984-85 school year is when Kraft was able to relinquish the cheerleading duties he had faithfully handled because he was being given a chance to coach West’s jayvee baseball team.
He would coach the Falcon jayvees for six years. His teams posted a fine record of 85-21.
“We had good kids and some solid players,” Kraft said. “They drank the Kool-Aid, so to speak, and they believed that by working together we good knock off anyone. We stressed fundamentals like bunting and base running and we won a lot of games with small ball. Coaching the jayvees was always fun. Guys wanted to learn and wanted to improve. It’s a rewarding thing for a coach when he sees a player gaining confidence in himself, and I got to see that. There were a lot of little victories won, a lot of growth for a lot of individual kids. That’s something I strived for.”
Shortly after the 1991 season, West Rowan varsity coach Terry Osborne, who had been the Rowan County Coach of the Year twice and conference coach of the year twice, stepped down to devote more time to his social studies classroom and to politics.
Kraft was elevated to varsity head coach. He served in that role for eight seasons (1992-99) and exactly 100 wins.
The 1994 Falcons were 17-5 and won the Yadkin Valley Conference regular season and tournament. Kraft was YVC Coach of the Year.
The 1997 Falcons set the school record for victories at that time with a 22-7 season. After starting 5-5, they surged all the way to the semifinals of the 2A state playoffs before they lost to Cherryville and superstar Ralph Roberts.
“I’m probably the world’s worst coach as far as remembering what happened in specific games and the scores of the games,” Kraft said. “But I remember all the players. It’s still fun for me when I run into one of them at Food Lion.”
There were a lot of wins for Kraft on the field and in the classroom in 1997. He was the Rowan County Coach of the Year and he was named West Rowan’s Teacher of the Year for the second time. He previously had been honored by West in 1989.
They handed Kraft a key to West’s Special Education room in 1982. He spent his career there with the same key and in the same room.
“Even when I was a varsity head coach, I always looked at myself as a teacher first,” Kraft said. “I had a passion for coaching, I truly loved coaching, but it was still secondary to my work as a teacher.”
Kraft stepped down from West baseball in 1999 mostly because of his three children. His wife had been operating as a single parent every baseball season, and he was sick of missing his children’s games. He got tired of them being in bed by the time he got home. They were ages 5, 7 and 10 when he resigned. So he was done as a head coach at 39, but there were a lot of work days still in front of him.
He continued to teach at West until 2004, when he moved to Southeast Middle as an assistant principal. He finished work on his masters in school administration from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2006 and was elevated to principal at Southeast in 2007. When he retired from Southeast in 2012, with 30 years in the school system, he was still only 51.
“I was way too young to retire,” Kraft said.
The next step in life happened naturally. John Williams, who had been principal at West Rowan before he retired from the school system, had taken the job as director of Rowan Vocational Opportunities. He knew Kraft and Kraft knew him.
“So I went to work for John again,” Kraft said. It was work that allowed me to use my knowledge and experience in the field. Kind of a full circle moment.”
In retirement, Kraft will get to devote more time to his hobbies – lawn care and bass fishing.
He’s been taking care of eight yards, which is sort of a full-time job.
His competitive spirit has been channeled into bass fishing tournaments. He’s good at it, has won quite a bit, and is looking forward to being able to fish some during the week now as well as on the weekends when lakes are crowded with boats. He’s also got a pottery wheel and he hopes to make more use of it.
“I’m someone who likes to see results,” Kraft said. “Whether it’s a freshly mowed yard, a finished pot or a 6-pound bass in the boat.”
Kraft is proud of his children. Elizabeth went into nursing and Julia into education.
His son, Louis V, born during the Falcons’ strong baseball season of 1994, has had success as West Rowan’s head football coach since he was promoted to that role in 2020. Skip is a helpful, positive presence on the staff. He’s Dad, more than he’s Coach Kraft. He’s that nice, older gentleman that everyone likes.
” I don’t coach a position,” Skip said. “My job is coaching Louis. I’ve experienced a lot of things as a coach. There’s a lot to deal with on a sideline. I try to use my experience to help him. When Louis was hired as head coach at West, he was 26, one of the youngest head coaches in the state, so I’ve tried to be an additional set of eyes and ears for him. It’s been a blessing to be able to spend quality time with a son that I’m very proud of and I still enjoy being around West’s athletes. Some of our players now, I coached their dads.”
Kraft has had health issues, which have given him a deeper perspective on life. The obituary pages contain the names of friends more frequently as you get older. He takes no days for granted and will look to make each one count.
“Sports were the vehicle for me to have a great life,” Kraft summed up. “Now I’ll ride off into the sunset.”
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