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VOLUME 26, ISSUE 1 23 working out, not only playing football but also working on techniques in a more detailed way, I saw his ability to learn difficult movements as very good. It was exception- ally good, I must say." Following high school, Hedelin played a 10-game sea- son for the Lidingö Saints, the club team coached then by Klein-Strandberg, that played in an 11-man outdoor football league. "Coaches in Sweden told me I was good enough to play football in the States," Hedelin said. "Which level? There was one coach (Klein-Strandberg) who told me I could play D-1 football and I was like 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.'" B ut that would have to wait. Hedelin's football career — if it could even be called that by then — took a hiatus when at 19 he moved to Argentina, where his parents wanted to take more hands-on management of the winery they own there. Argentinians do play American football, but leagues are organized only in big cit- ies. Not, unfortunately, near a coun- tryside winery. But Hedelin's wait lasted only 18 months. Then, the family was on the move again, taking off for Spain, in part to give better athletic opportuni- ties to David and his younger brother, a then-budding soccer player. In Spain, Hedelin hooked up with the Valencia Firebats of the Ameri- can Football Club for the final three games of their 2011 season. "In Spain, he played every snap, of- fense and defense," Anders Hedelin said. "It's a huge difference, two oceans between that kind of football (and that in the U.S.)." But his performance there showed David enough that he thought he could play in the States. In an effort to do so, he and Anders started re- searching potential destinations on the Internet, sending out about 30 emails, with linked highlights, to teams at various levels of college football, from D-I to D-III. Stanford got an email, which was ignored. Boston Col- lege got one, because Anders had gone to high school in New England as an exchange student, then studied at a university there. Also ignored. In fact, no emails were returned. But Hedelin had a connection, albeit a small one. Two Swedes had played at City College of San Francisco, es- tablishing a bit of a pipeline to the few prospects in the European country, so George Rush, the legendary and re- cently retired coach of the Rams, brought him over. In his first season there, the then-235-pound Hedelin played tight end before putting on 40-or-so pounds and moving over to left tackle for his second year. And he was so good, even with limited experience, that Rivals.com ranked him the eighth-best J.C. lineman in the country Photo provided / Tom Campbell David Hedelin, with Saints in 2010 (left) and Boilermakers in 2015, has made drastic physical improvements since first starting seven-man indoor football in his native Sweden.