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22 GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED English being a second language — he speaks three — and he was stressing out, thinking about football nearly all the time, an all-consuming mindset that was costing him sleep. But now, as a senior, he's nearly eliminated those ills. He's more at ease, so confident in his abilities that he could be on the verge of putting it all together. "If last year at this time he was a C-minus as a play- er," Coach Darrell Hazell said, "he's probably an A-minus right now." Hedelin will take that, considering his humble begin- nings in the sport, starting off when he played seven-man indoor football at his high school in Stockholm. It's part of a journey that's taken him from there to Argentina to Spain to California and now to West Lafayette. H edelin didn't want to be subtle. It's not in his nature. He wanted to be rough, knock some heads, de- ploy the temper, which dad Anders says he inherited from him, that burns through when competition gets going. But playing middle defender on the soccer (called fot- boll in Sweden) team at Gångsätra School in Stockholm, the then-6-foot-4, 200-or-so-pound high school upper- classman had to be sneaky physical, getting a shoulder into an opposing player or pushing a hand to the hip to knock him off course. It's all he could do, just get a poke in here or there, to avoid yellow cards for too-physical play. "I was smart about it," David Hedelin said through a strong Swedish accent during Purdue's training camp in August. "It's not like football, you can't just run someone over." But though he still loved soccer, being physical was sure what he wanted to do. And he found an opportunity. Gångsätra has a sports tradition, started by a group of United States exchange students more than 30 years ago, in which the Killers take on their cross-town high school rivals, the Hooligans of Hersby. It's seven-man indoor foot- ball, played on a hard-court surface of a Cracker Jack box of a gymnasium. But full of pomp, with banners adorning the walls — for some reason, the Hooligans' flag in the '09 game, back around the time Hedelin played, featured super brothers Mario and Luigi — and fans screaming and waving flags from the bleachers. Multi-colored pads lined the gym walls, which butted up against the court of play, in an attempt to keep players from serious injury. It's Friday Night Lights, except in Sweden and only one night a year. The event gave Hedelin an outlet. He played on the of- fensive line and at defensive end for Gångsätra, although he begged to be running back occasionally, and was in- stantly hooked. He quit soccer. "He has a very aggressive mentality toward himself and others, which I tend to like," said Jonathan Klein-Strand- berg, who coached the Killers back then and has become both a friend and mentor to Hedelin in the years since. "It fits with my coaching style and how I run my team. And he was also very physically gifted, even though he lacked a lot of strength. He had a well-developed lower body and he had a knack the game. "Playing lineman, there can be a lot of difficult posi- tions to get in to and it requires strength and agility and also know-how. And he had this ability to learn these things without practicing them." Klein-Strandberg sensed an opportunity, seeing traits in Hedelin that made him think he could play collegiately in the United States. And so they started training as if it could actually happen, even if it seemed such a long shot. They, along with a couple others, started to hit the gym regularly, going to lift and work out about four times a week. "(David) made significant improvements over one year," Klein-Strandberg said. "He probably started out not being able to bench press 100 pounds, but after that year he was well over 225. He could squat almost 200 kilo, which is over 400 pounds. That's a 17-year-old kid who had been working out for about three months. "… He used to play soccer, so he had a very good run- ning technique. So we just got a little lineman footwork into him, and since he already had the explosiveness and endurance, he had a lot of things going for him that he could use already. After this, I noticed when we started