CORVALLIS — Thomas Collins played hockey and tried his luck at soccer. It’s what kids who grow up in Gothenburg, Sweden, do.

But there was a problem.

“I kept getting penalties, because I was tackling people,” the Oregon State Beavers redshirt freshman said, smiling.

Finally, when Collins was about 13, a solution surfaced. As his friends started dedicating themselves exclusively to hockey, joining junior teams and beginning their professional careers, Collins learned that Gothenburg had a youth football team. His father was from the United States and played high school football in Detroit, so deep down, Collins said, he “always wanted to be American (and) play football.”

So he made his way to that youth football team, and after just one workout, Collins was hooked.

“We did an Oklahoma drill the first practice,” he said. “And I was in.”

It was the start of a unique journey that led Collins to the RIG American Football Academy in Sweden, the cutthroat world of college football recruiting and, perhaps, to a starting role along the defensive line at Oregon State.

Collins worked extensively with the first team defense during the first week of preseason camp, wreaking havoc in the trenches on a retooled front that lost six players — and a combined 187 games played — from last season’s team. The Beavers are touting their defense as a strength in this season of great transition, thanks to an experienced and tenacious secondary and athletic linebacker core.

But it could be the new-look defensive front that decides how fierce the defense will be, and Collins figures to be an integral piece.

The 6-foot-1, 285-pound lineman first started turning heads in fall camp last season as a true freshman. After recording multiple sacks in the Beavers’ final scrimmage, he threatened to become a mainstay on the two-deep roster. But on a deep and talented front that included veterans Sione Lolohea, James Rawls and Isaac Hodgins — who each played 40 or more games in their OSU careers — playing time was fleeting, and Collins went on to play in just three.

But now, during his second season in Corvallis, Collins is poised to fill a more prominent role.

Swift and tenacious on the attack, Collins uses a quick first step and a bowling ball mentality to disrupt offensive lines. Teammates and coaches have compared him to Hodgins, because of his stature and style, an appropriate comparison, it turns out, because Hodgins joked last year that Collins was his “son” and spent a large chunk of his final college season mentoring his young Swedish teammate.

“Huge,” Collins said, when asked to describe Hodgins’ impact on his early development. “The first week … I was out here with Simon (Sandberg) and Hodgins in the cold working out, getting moves in. Hodgins taught me some of the little guy moves, little wax lips, and stuff like that.”

Added coach Trent Bray: “I think he’ll be very similar to what Hodgins was a year ago. He’s got that that twitchiness, that athleticism inside, which I think can give inside guys’ trouble, especially in pass protection.”

Multiple Beavers have used the word “twitchy” to describe Collins’ ability.

“Thomas is very twitchy,” defensive coordinator Keith Heyward said. “Kind of hard to block. I see him as a guy, when he gets vertical and he’s in that attack style and getting vertical, he’s hard to block when he when he’s getting off the ball. That’s the best way I would describe him.”

Collins started honing his twitchiness a couple years after participating in his first Oklahoma drill. He assimilated quickly to youth football in Sweden and when it was time for high school, he landed a coveted spot at RIG, a football academy in Uppsala, situated roughly six hours away from Gothenburg near the Baltic Sea.

The three-year program only admits 30 students at a time — 10 in each class — and competes against academies in Paris, London and other European cities outside of Sweden. One of the goals of the program, which receives government funding, is to produce top-level players, and Collins showed enough promise during his time there he was invited to join a group of European players for a recruiting trip to the United States. It helped him land scholarship offers from the likes of Penn State, Oregon, Texas and Texas A&M, but Collins chose the Beavers, in part, because Corvallis reminded him of home.

“It looks just like Sweden, almost,” he said. “A lot of trees. And then, just the staff and area and campus and school and everything. I fit in perfectly.”

But while his path to a starting job has seemingly come relatively quickly, Collins’ time in Corvallis has not come without challenges. The biggest came in January, when a random daytime fire ravaged his apartment, devastating everything.

Collins was in the middle of a volunteer workout on campus at the time, but he returned to the apartment — which he shared with teammate Zachary Card and Card’s girlfriend, Gianna Bautista — to discover that all of his belongings were in ashes.

“I lost everything except for the stuff I was wearing,” Collins said.

There was good news lying in the rubble, however. A student assistant fund, which the NCAA provides to student athletes, helped pay for new clothes and other items. And the OSU football program was there for everything else, as parents, staff, coaches and teammates made sure Collins had everything from emotional support to a place to live.

In the end, while he lost everything — most notably an old, hooded sweatshirt his father had passed down to him from his days in the Navy — Collins also gained perspective.

“It brought me closer to football, definitely,” he said. “It brought me closer to God. Just made me see, like, the important stuff in life. I had all this stuff that I thought was important, that I brought from Sweden. And it really showed me that there is more important stuff in life that just material.”

And now, armed with that perspective and a season’s worth of development, Collins is poised to replace the man — Hodgins — that he so often draws comparisons to.

Even their uniform numbers are similar — Collins sports No. 98, while Hodgins wore No. 99 — which might cause Beavers fans to do a double take early in the season.

“TC is fast, quick,” defensive back Jaden Robinson said. “He reminds me of Hodge a little bit. He just brings that speed and quickness to the line for us.”