CRAIG MITCHELLDYER/For The News Tribune After his third season of organized football, Portland high school senior Ndamukong Suh was named Oregon's defensive player of the year and got a scholarship to Nebraska.

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PORTLAND – If there is one aspect of football Greg Barton knows, it’s quarterback pressure.

Barton played quarterback, throwing one pass in the NFL for the Detroit Lions in the late 1960s. His son, Taylor, was an NCAA Division I quarterback at Colorado and the University of Washington.

Of the thousands of players who have enrolled in Barton’s “Air Attack” camps, more than a few were passers.

So, when asked about a high school defensive lineman who just completed his third season of organized football, why was Barton full of superfluous praise? Like many who have seen Ndamukong Suh line up, Barton is captivated by his latest teenage pupil’s accelerated learning curve.

“This is the greatest compliment you can give a kid today,” Barton said. “Others kept telling me how unbelievably coachable he was. He’s a sponge. He takes it all in and he learns. He doesn’t have an attitude, like, ‘I know it all.’

“He is just a special kid.”

Ndamukong Suh (pronounced En-dom-ah-ken Sue) is a quarterback’s worst nightmare – a 6-foot-5, 275-pounder from Grant High School, which plays in the Portland Interscholastic League.

Suh is built like a human wall, assuming that wall had the feet of a ballerina and the speed of a sprinter.

So versatile on a football field is Suh that the number of positions he could play seemed to match how many major college programs offered him scholarships.

A drive-blocking offensive guard. A punishing, pass-protecting offensive tackle. A fear-inducing rush defensive end. A quick-as-a-first-impression defensive tackle.

Did we mention placekicker and kickoff specialist?

And then come the colleges – Miami, Nebraska, California, Oregon State, UCLA – and their scholarship offers.

He plays much like his name (same as his great-grandfather’s, by the way) – with a nonstop abandon that has him flying around the field.

It makes sense since in the Ngemba tribe in Cameroon, from which his father hails, the name means “House of Spears.”

“I think there are guys who are quite big, but not athletic,” said Madison (Portland) High coach Tracy Jackson. “But he has amazing athleticism and balance and there aren’t many guys that big who have that. Our offensive linemen had to keep two bodies on him. But he’s able to move where he wants to. We were overmatched.”

Jackson knows firsthand what Suh can do.

In the final regular-season game in 2004, his Madison team met Suh and the Grant High Generals with the league title on the line.

Suh recorded two sacks early and forced the Senators to run plays away from him, essentially reducing the playbook.

Grant won, 28-0.

“He’s got a very high competitive nature,” Grant coach Gary Thorson said. “I think you add that with his natural ability and you get someone very hard to stop. He just wants to do well.”

What sets Suh apart, however, isn’t his footwork, his always-running motor or his imposing size. No, it’s more what goes on between his ears.

The son of athletic parents, sports were encouraged, but not at the expense of education.

His father, Suh Michael, played semipro soccer in the German Second Division before immigrating to the United States in 1981, where he earned a mechanical engineering degree at Portland State.

Suh’s mother, Bernadette, played cricket and ran track in her native Jamaica before earning a teaching degree at Southern Oregon University.

Sister, Ngum Suh, played soccer at Mississippi State and will graduate this spring.

In a family like that, you can bet Suh hit the books like he did an unsuspecting quarterback.

“Oh, yeah, education always came first,” Ndamukong Suh said. “I knew it would be difficult for me to play sports if I didn’t do well in school, so I never let it get to that point.”

Naturally, Suh would like to be an engineer. So when he took his official visits to colleges, education played an important role in his decision.

After narrowing his choices to California and Nebraska, he decided on the Cornhuskers, where he thinks the school’s academics and football program fit him best.

Not bad for a kid who was a soccer and basketball player growing up and has played only three years of organized football.

“I know this sounds silly, but I was afraid he would get hurt,” Suh Michael said. “And we also wanted him to get acclimated to being in high school. So he didn’t play his first year.”

Ndamukong began playing soccer around age 4 – until the eighth grade. He also was an unstoppable inside force in basketball, entering high school he said at “about 6-foot-2, pushing 300 pounds.”

He was named honorable mention all-league in basketball in the tough PIL. As if that wasn’t enough, Suh won the shot put at last spring’s district meet.

But it wasn’t until his sophomore year that he played football. Thanks to his amazing ability to process information and put it to immediate action, it’s been a rapid ascent.

In three seasons, Suh has twice been named first team all-league on both sides of the ball and was an honorable mention all-state selection on offense and defense as a junior.

He capped his senior season with a slew of honors, including state and league defensive player of the year, and first-team all-state honors on defense and second team honors on offense.

He also led the Generals to consecutive playoff appearances and their first state quarterfinal appearance in 26 years.

“He’s been a very important part of this senior class,” Thorson said. “We’ve done a lot of things around here no one had done for awhile. I think he’s been a big part of what we’ve been able to accomplish here in such a short time.”

Bigger things likely lie ahead for him.

With only three years of football experience and a stunning array of skills, Suh has unlimited potential – upside, in coaching vernacular .

At last week’s U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio, which featured 83 of the nation’s top high school seniors, Suh gave a glimpse of what his future could hold.

He went to the game as a defensive lineman, but when injuries hit the West squad’s offensive line, coaches asked Suh if he could switch.

He was the only player on the team who had played both ways in his high school.

A little perturbed about the switch, Suh was one of the game’s outstanding performers, turning in a dominating performance at his least favorite position.

“You don’t see a kid that big that can play four very different positions,” Barton said. “It’s amazing what he can do. But he’s just so smart and he visualizes things in his head. Some kids, it takes years to understand things. He pick it up so quick. If he stays healthy and he develops, I don’t think there is any question he can be a big-time college player and play on Sundays.”

Jon Naito: 253-597-8742, ext. 6108

jon.naito@thenewstribune.com