John and Pam met in the mid-1970s at a cookout for College of Charleston athletes. He was an NAIA all-district basketball player there from 1975-78 and was inducted into the Cougars’ athletics hall of fame in 1994. The Drafts’ marriage produced two sons and, arguably, one of the most athletically accomplished families to ever call the Beaufort area home.

Trent, their older son, played guard and forward at Charleston Southern University from 2001-06, then played professional basketball in Europe and Asia for seven years. Collin, who is two years younger than Trent, played quarterback for Battery Creek, then starred at Charleston Southern, where he was a four-year starter, 2005 Big South Conference offensive player of the year and a member of the conference’s all-decade squad. Seven years of professional arena football followed. He is now head football coach at East River High School in Orlando, Fla. “Athletics has just been part of our life from the beginning,” Drafts said.

The family’s desire to make sports something they do together is one reason Drafts spent most of his coaching career at Battery Creek. There were other jobs and other opportunities, though. Drafts was a graduate assistant for the Cougars the year before legendary coach John Kresse took over the program. He then spent four seasons as an assistant at Brookland-Cayce High School, not far from his hometown of Lexington. The Dolphins gave Drafts his first head coaching job in 1983, then made him athletics director, as well, in 1985. Trent was 2, Pam was pregnant with Collin … and John’s phone was ringing.

Kresse, who by that time had led the Cougars to an NAIA national title, asked Drafts to return to his alma mater as an assistant. Presbyterian College also offered an assistant’s job. Though Drafts had long desired to be a college coach, “the timing was just bad.” He liked Battery Creek, and he was making more money there than he would at either college. The real deal-breaker was the travel — and time away from his family — that a college position would entail. So Drafts stayed put. He retired from coaching 2010 and departed as Battery Creek’s athletics director after the 2015-16 school year. He now works as a substitute teacher at Whale Branch High School and assists one of his former players, Walter Capers, with the Warriors’ junior varsity squad. “This has been a good community to raise a family in,” Drafts said of his decision to decline other coaching opportunities. “So there’s no regrets on that.”