Hamilton lineman Westerman is a Texas-sized recruit

Offensive tackle is Arizona's top college prospect heading into 2010 season thanks in part to boxing training.

If you ever tried to ride a roller coaster as a kid, but failed to meet the height requirements, you have an inkling what Christian Westerman experienced.

Christian Westerman.

Photo by Mitchell Reibel

 
In reverse.

The highly-recruited Hamilton (Chandler, Ariz.) offensive tackle wasn’t too small to play Pop Warner as a child. He was too big.
 
“It was pretty frustrating,’ said Westerman, whose family estimates he was about 6-foot-1 and weighed between 230 and 235 pounds by sixth grade.
 
“I remember one of the officials telling me ‘You can try to diet him or put him in a sauna to dial it down,’” Westerman’s dad, Chris, said, laughing. “The problem was there just wasn’t any fat on him. There was nothing to lose.”
 
Westerman played flag football as an outlet. He also tried his hand at basketball, but that sports posed its own set of problems.
 
“He was posting kids up at the Y and knocking them on the floor,” Chris Westerman said. “I told my wife, ‘We need to get him into a sport where he can hit somebody.”
 
So Christian trained with Ahwatukee-based boxer Don Anderson for three years, learning footwork, hand speed and myriad other valuable lessons. By the time he took the field at Hamilton as a freshman for his first legitimate football, he was an agile, mean blocking machine.
 
“Sometimes, you either have it or you don’t have it,” Hamilton coach Steve Belles said. “When Christian started doing it, it was like he’d been doing it for eight years.”
 
Entering his senior season for two-time defending Class 5A Division I state champ Hamilton, Westerman is one of the most recruited athletes in Arizona history. MaxPreps ranks him as the fifth-best offensive lineman in the nation, while other sites, such as ESPN, have him ranked No. 1 at his position and No. 4 overall in the United States.
 
Westerman (6-foot-5, 293 pounds), has already given a verbal commitment to Texas and remains in awe of the Longhorns program.
 
“Everything’s just top level from the coaches to the players to the faculty to the school to Longhorn nation,” he said.
 
But his dad, who played at California on a full-ride scholarship, cautions there is still a lot of time between now and signing day in February.
 
“Look at how much the college football landscape has changed in just the past few months with programs changing conference and schools like USC being punished by the NCAA,” Chris Westerman said. “A lot can still happen so it’s wise to keep your options open.”
 
In the meantime, Westerman is hoping to finish off his Hamilton career in style with his third consecutive state championship. In three previous years at Hamilton, Westerman has lost just one game, going undefeated in freshman football and losing the third game of the 2008-2009 regular season to state powerhouse Centennial (Peoria, Ariz.) before an undefeated 2009-2010 campaign.
 
He anchors what some local observers are calling the best offensive line in the history of the state, along with highly recruited tackle Tyler Johnstone.
 
“I’m looking forward to seeing him be a leader of the line and blossom in terms of taking charge,” Belles said.
 
So what makes Westerman so special?
 
Scouts describe him as physical, strong and aggressive. He has good flexibility in a three-point stance and comes off the ball with good initial quickness and explosion. He has the size and strength to maul opponents or knock them back, but he’s also a terrific athlete with technical skills, he’s sound in pass protection and he has good footwork.
 
It’s high praise for a kid with only three years of playing time under his belt, and it’s positively jaw-dropping when you imagine Westerman’s potential.
 
In hindsight, boxing proved to be the perfect training ground for football.
 
“Don (Anderson) is just a fantastic motivator and teacher,” Chris Westerman said of his son’s boxing trainer. “Christian was working on the speed bag, the heavy bag, his footwork, sparring and just learning to be good with his hands.
 
“It was all the stuff that, fundamentally, offensive line play is all about: balance, pass protection, footwork, quickness, hand-eye coordination and being able to punch with his hands. It ended up being the best thing he could have done.”
 
It certainly caught the attention of a host of recruiters – not that Westerman has really noticed. While Belles admits to fielding uncountable calls regarding the state’s top recruit, and while his dad admits to still being awed by all the attention, Westerman shrugs it off.
 
“Not really," Westerman said, when asked if he thinks about all the attention. “I guess it’s pretty cool, but I just think about playing. We have really good chances of getting to state. That’s what’s important to me.”
 
Craig Morgan is a freelance writer who has covered professional, college and high school sports in the Phoenix area for the past 18 years. He currently serves as the Phoenix correspondent for CBSSports.com, covering the Arizona Cardinals and other local teams. He also writes a weekly column and other features for The Arizona Republic. You can reach him at craig@wordsmithonline.com.