By: Burke De Boer
Sports Editor

When you stand on a hill in Harney County you can see the grassland roll for miles.

The sky is big and pale blue. With no trees or buildings it seems to come right down to the sagebrush and hay fields.

It’s here where George Swartzlender grew up: where he learned to hunt, fish and trap, where he learned to work hard and learned to compete.

But not where he learned to play ball.

Four years ago, Swartzlender came to Western. “I wanted to learn how to play football,” he said. “I wanted to see if I could do it.”

He is now finishing his Wolves career with 165 tackles as a defensive lineman.

Swartzlender is known as the “Bruiser from Burns” or “Killer.” Despite all the brawn and imbalance that’s commonly associated with tough tacklers, Swartzlender laughs easily.

“When I got here, I had never lifted a weight or anything like that. People would be like ‘What the hell? What do you do?’” When he laughs, his laughter fills the room. “I don’t know, I just lifted a lot of hay bales.”

He first came west of the Cascades after a prolific high school wrestling career to join Oregon State University’s wrestling team.

The culture shock hit hard. Burns is the biggest city in Harney County. It has a population of 2,728, which makes Corvallis roughly 20 times larger.

“I’ve got older and better,” Swartzlender said. “There’s a whole bunch of different people than what I grew up with and there was gonna be a lot more conflict if I let that get to me. But that was horrible. People calling us rednecks, thinking we’re all uneducated human beings. We weren’t the norm. And the norm for us if people talk s— is to fight. We lived in a different generation almost.”

His time in Corvallis dampened further with the winter. “It started raining every day, I was like ‘Oh, God, take me home.’ I still haven’t adapted to the rain, I don’t think I ever will.”

All in all, he enjoyed his time in Corvallis. But while football players have the potential for lucrative contracts, wrestling doesn’t provide nearly as promising of a future.

With the goal of going pro, he’s already met with NFL scouts. For their money, he sizes up well against professional linemen.

“Me and my buddy Jeremy [Moore] want to play together somewhere. If the NFL isn’t an option we want to keep playing somewhere. Even going to Europe or anywhere we can go and just have fun.”

His transformation from gridiron novice to veteran is clear when you talk to his teammates.

Linebacker Bo Highburger has enjoyed taking to the field behind Swartzlender. This season’s tackles leader, Highburger considers Swartzlender to be one of the toughest humans he’s ever met.

It was this toughness that helped him master football in the first place.

“I push myself to be better,” Swartzlender said. “I’ve found a way to win in every matchup. It’s a ‘You’re never gonna beat me twice’ type of thing. I’ll learn, I’ll adapt. I train so hard because I always thought someone out there was training harder than I was. And you can’t hide that.”

The one drawback to football is how it overlaps with hunting season.

Travelling is in the nature of sports and while cooped up on bus rides and plane rides to other campuses, George Swartzlender thinks of home. Since he was old enough to walk, his family took him on hunting trips. Every fall, the family tradition returned and the Swartzlenders tracked game across the desert.

“I was in northern Alabama one year. We were playing down there against North Alabama. My brother sent me a picture of a big ol’ bull he killed. An elk. I’ve never been so jealous in my whole life. I just wanted to pack everything in.”

To overcome the jealousy he looks at the big picture. “If I do this now then I can spend the rest of my time hunting and fishing as long as I can.”

Under the guidance of Wolves defensive line coach, Kimo von Oelhoffen, Swartzlender made the all-GNAC team three years in a row. He became a staple of the defense and a leader on the team.

“The coaches gave me a shot, they gave me an opportunity, and I took it,” Swartzlender said.

His career at Western has come to a close. It may be the end of his football career as a whole. Or it may be just the start of the long story of a professional football player.

Wherever the road of football leads, the clear blue skies of Harney County will remain. Somewhere across the sagebrush flats an elk bugles and a tag waits to be filled.

Contact the author at journalsports@wou.edu