Lucas Krost of Richmond doesn’t look much like a football player, or even like the son of a football player.
He looks like what he is - a serious videographer; a maker of films, documentaries and commercials.
For the past 10 years or so, he has shot video of the father he was really just getting to know, seeing him safely and clearly through his camera lens.
“ . . . just in awe of the fact that he’s, you know, a little bit older and still plays competitive football,” Lucas says. “But it was always a project that didn’t have an identity. I didn’t know what I was doing with it. I was just shooting him.”
His dad, Lee Krost, is a pretty cool story all in himself. He played high school football here at Douglas Freeman, college ball at Randolph-Macon and semi-pro here with the Richmond Rebels and the Richmond Vikings.
[CLICK HERE TO SEE THE NFL VIDEO AND VOTE FOR LEE: http://www.togetherwemakefootball.com/contest.html]
“He got an opportunity to try out with the Baltimore Colts,” Lucas explains. “And the year he tried out they already had a quarterback. His name was Johnny Unitas.”
Lee Krost started a business and a family, and kept playing football. “He’s now 74 years old. He plays with guys a quarter of his age and he’s still the best quarterback” in their flag football league in Norwalk, Conn.
Lucas’ mother and father divorced apparently just before Lucas was born.
He grew up wondering about his father. Was it his fault that they split?
“All I wanted to do was make him proud,” Lucas says in his short film about his father that is now one of 10 finalists (among thousands) in the National Football League’s “Together We Make Football” video competition.
Lucas said he got a call from his brother several weeks ago about the contest, urging him use the video he’d been shooting to tell a story about redemption, forgiveness and the fierce love of a sport that may have skipped a generation but still helped bring a family together.
You see, Lucas readily admits football just doesn’t come naturally to him. He’s more geek than jock. But he certainly admires his father’s grasp of it and the way it has moved him. And it became a way for them to communicate once they connected in a much deeper way after the birth of Lucas’ son, Will – Lee’s grandson.
“It’s been really fun for me to put aside some of those misconceptions that any kid has after a divorce, and develop a relationship with him,” Lucas says of his father. “And seeing him with my son and teaching him the game he loves is a magical, magical feeling.”
That’s the plot of “The Comeback,” Lee’s story.
Lucas says his father has played football all-out. But like his missed chance in the NFL, Lee has “never closed the deal,” when it came to taking tip-top honors in the flag football league he has played in for years.
Lucas is hoping their video wins top honors and his father will get a trip to the Super Bowl and chance to see and feel the sport he has loved whole-heartedly at its very pinnacle.
You can bet his son, and likely his grandson, will be along for that journey.
The contest voting period started at noon on Nov. 28 and ends at 11:59:59 pm ET on Dec. 23, 2013.
