There are fans, and there are die-hard fans.

When it comes to the Montana State University Bobcats, Dean and Barb Swank surely meet the definition of die-hard fans.

They will be in Bozeman cheering on the Bobcats from their sky box during the upcoming annual Cat-Griz game Nov. 23.

“We go to most of the games, the home games,” Dean said. “We probably get to 80 percent of the games.”

The Swanks’ support for MSU goes back a long way. Dean graduated from MSU in 1958 with a degree in architectural enginning. Barb attended the Bozeman-based university for three years.

Their son Derek earned a degree in industrial arts from MSU; he manages Swank Enterprises’ Valier office. Their other son Dewey earned his degree from MSU in civil engineering; he manages the Kalispell office.

Their daughter Traci Miller strayed from tradition, attending the University of Montana.

She co-owns DeVoe’s Builders Service in Valier, a business founded in 1946 by Dean’s parents, Gail and DeVoe Swank.

Swank Enterprises, a leading construction firm in the region, also has a number of employees who proudly wear the Bobcat blue and gold.

There are close to a dozen MSU alumni just among the firm’s project managers, and plenty of others among the company’s 200 or so employees who likewise are MSU graduates.

“We do have lots of people from Bozeman,” Dean said. “It goes hand in hand with what we do. Everybody in construction hires civil engineers.”

 “The other side of the coin is we [Swank Enterprises] do a lot of work in Missoula,” Dean pointed out.

Though he’s hoping for a Bobcat victory in the “Brawl of the Wild,” he’s reluctant to make a prediction about the outcome.

“The games are never easy for either side,” Dean said. “I’d say it’ll be a real tight game.”

Another die-hard Bobcat fan at Swank Enterprises is project superintendent Mark Harwood, an outside linebacker on the 1984 MSU national championship team.

Harwood and his wife Ava met while attending MSU. She has a degree from MSU in communications and also is an ardent Bobcat fan.

The Harwoods aren’t able to make it to Bozeman this year for the Cat-Griz showdown, but they’ll be there in spirit.

“We’ll be rooting for them,” he said.

Thanks to social media, Harwood still keeps in touch with quite a few of his teammates and coaches.

“It was a great group of guys; everybody was on the same page,” Harwood recalled. “We lost a couple games but we always came back. Most of the games were really close. Everybody fought to win.”

He fondly remembers the rapport he and fellow players had with head coach Dave Arnold, who was widely respected in the collegiate coaching arena.

When the 1984 team was inducted into the MSU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1995, the documentation accompanying the honor called it “the most improbable season in college football” with MSU’s 19-6 win over Louisana Tech.

That extraordinary season began “inauspiciously,” the Hall of Fame official program noted. The Bobcats lost two of their first four games before things began to click. A 48-0 road win over Weber State was followed by a 44-41 four-overtime home win over Nevada. Then MSU beat Portland State and Boise State in successive weeks before drilling the Griz 34-24 in Missoula.

“The mark of Montana State’s 1984 season was that, time and again, the team found a way to win,” the committee noted.

Harwood said he’s proud to have been a part of that special team. A 1983 Whitefish High School graduate, he went to MSU on a partial football scholarship. He was redshirted the first year, then obtained a full scholarship for the remainder of his college career.

He earned a business management degree.

Harwood didn’t play football during his last year at MSU due to three concussions he sustained during play.

“I helped with the team and coaches that last year,” he said.

Between a busy work schedule with Swank and his daughter’s busy senior year, he said it has been difficult to get to Bobcat games on a regular basis.

“Maybe next year we’ll get season tickets,” he said. “Our daughter is looking at going to MSU and we’re excited about that.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.