{"id":4683,"date":"2016-11-30T08:00:45","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T16:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=4683"},"modified":"2016-11-29T16:12:24","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T00:12:24","slug":"bruiser-burns-hits-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/bruiser-burns-hits-trail\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bruiser from Burns hits the trail"},"content":{"rendered":"
By: Burke De Boer\r\nSports Editor<\/pre>\n
When you stand on a hill in Harney County you can see the grassland roll for miles.<\/p>\n
The sky is big and pale blue. With no trees or buildings it seems to come right down to the sagebrush and hay fields.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s here where George Swartzlender grew up: where he learned to hunt, fish a\"george-fich-color\"nd trap, where he learned to work hard and learned to compete.<\/p>\n
But not where he learned to play ball.<\/p>\n
Four years ago, Swartzlender came to Western. \u201cI wanted to learn how to play football,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to see if I could do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is now finishing his Wolves career with 165 tackles as a defensive lineman.<\/p>\n
Swartzlender is known as the \u201cBruiser from Burns\u201d or \u201cKiller.\u201d Despite all the brawn and imbalance that\u2019s commonly associated with tough tacklers, Swartzlender laughs easily.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I got here, I had never lifted a weight or anything like that. People would be like \u2018What the hell? What do you do?\u2019\u201d When he laughs, his laughter fills the room. \u201cI don\u2019t know, I just lifted a lot of hay bales.\u201d<\/p>\n
He first came west of the Cascades after a prolific high school wrestling career to join Oregon State University\u2019s wrestling team.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got older and better,\u201d Swartzlender said. \u201cThere\u2019s 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\u2019re all uneducated human beings. We weren\u2019t the norm. And the norm for us if people talk s— is to fight. We lived in a different generation almost.\u201d<\/p>\n
His time in Corvallis dampened further with the winter. \u201cIt started raining every day, I was like \u2018Oh, God, take me home.\u2019 I still haven\u2019t adapted to the rain, I don\u2019t think I ever will.\u201d<\/p>\n
All in all, he enjoyed his time in Corvallis. But while football players have the potential for lucrative contracts, wrestling doesn\u2019t provide nearly as promising of a future.<\/p>\n
With the goal of going pro, he\u2019s already met with NFL scouts. For their money, he sizes up well against professional linemen.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe and my buddy Jeremy [Moore] want to play together somewhere. If the NFL isn\u2019t an option we want to keep playing somewhere. Even going to Europe or anywhere we can go and just have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
His transformation from gridiron novice to veteran is clear when you talk to his teammates.<\/p>\n
Linebacker Bo Highburger has enjoyed taking to the field behind Swartzlender. This season\u2019s tackles leader, Highburger considers Swartzlender to be one of the toughest humans he\u2019s ever met.<\/p>\n
It was this toughness that helped him master football in the first place.<\/p>\n
\u201cI push myself to be better,\u201d Swartzlender said. \u201cI\u2019ve found a way to win in every matchup. It\u2019s a \u2018You\u2019re never gonna beat me twice\u2019 type of thing. I\u2019ll learn, I\u2019ll adapt. I train so hard because I always thought someone out there was training harder than I was. And you can\u2019t hide that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The one drawback to football is how it overlaps with hunting season.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in northern Alabama one year. We were playing down there against North Alabama. My brother sent me a picture of a big ol\u2019 bull he killed. An elk. I\u2019ve never been so jealous in my whole life. I just wanted to pack everything in.\u201d<\/p>\n
To overcome the jealousy he looks at the big picture. \u201cIf I do this now then I can spend the rest of my time hunting and fishing as long as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe coaches gave me a shot, they gave me an opportunity, and I took it,\u201d Swartzlender said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Contact the author at journalsports@wou.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019s here where George Swartzlender grew up: where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":937,"featured_media":4717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/937"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}