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“He’s striving for greatness too, he wants to be the best in what he does and he’s way ahead of where I was at that time, so I’m very excited for him. He’s a freak athlete.

“He’s one of my best friends, we’re just on the grind together, pretty much.”

While nearly 2,150 km separate their home fields, the brothers try to stay in constant communication. And much of the talk, not surprisingly, revolves around football.

“Just about every day,” Zylstra said. “He will send me some of his practice film and stuff and I’ll do the same to him sometimes, just to kind of teach him different leverage techniques and stuff like that.”

It’s the same kind of thing Zylstra would have bounced off an older brother, had he been in Shane’s shoes. Instead, he finds himself playing the role of trail blazer.

“I would like to think so,” Zylstra said. “We’re both just trying to make sure we’re the best at our craft, always super nit-picky with everything that we’re doing. He’s an absolute workhorse too and I just think the competition level between us just feeds off each other and makes us better.

“We did everything together growing up.”

Except play on the same team, thanks to the four-year gap in age.

“That was actually one of our goals in college when he was picking a college,” Zylstra said. “We always talked about playing together on opposite sides, we always thought that would be super cool for our parents and family to watch too.

“But it never worked out, so we’re hoping sometime in the future we can get that (plan) going again.”