Garrett Rutledge was a wanted man.

Spring was coming. Baseball tryouts were in progress already. But around the diamond, the multi-talented Auburn High senior was nowhere to be found.

A couple of his buddies found him – and they had a not-so-subtle message:

Get out here. Now.

“Travis (Shreve) and Kyle (Buchanan) practically tried to run me over in the parking lot,” Rutledge said, laughing now at the recollection of his two pals essentially telling him that he wasn’t going anywhere except to baseball practice. “I came out the second day of tryouts.

“It all turned out for the better.”

Sure did. Rutledge hit half a dozen home runs, drove in 20 runs and helped the Trojans come within one victory of a third straight trip to the state semifinals.

He stood out just as much on the football field as a two-way All-South Puget Sound League 3A player. He wrestled his way into the Mat Classic state title match.

For all of those accomplishments, achieved in three sports at a time when such athletes are becoming fewer and fewer, Rutledge has been named the Reporter’s Auburn-area Male Prep Athlete of the Year.

“Whatever game he’s competing in at that time, that’s where he’s good,” said Gordon Elliott, who coached Rutledge in football and wound up coaching him in baseball when he took the Trojans’ reins following the midseason resignation of coach Brian Embery. “He did some good things football-wise. In baseball, he kind of came on and surprised some people – that’s a sport he hadn’t put a lot of time into.”

The 18-year-old Rutledge is one of those classic cases: His favorite sports is whatever’s in season.

“I’d have to say if I played (just) one, I wouldn’t like it,” he said. “Wrestling is the most enjoyable to practice just because you’re doing what you practice. Football games are the most enjoyable on game nights, because there’s a huge amount of fans and tons of people from Auburn go out. The atmosphere is just electric.”

Rutledge helped spark some of that highly charged atmosphere, running for three touchdowns and catching another one last fall. He was accorded All-SPSL 3A second-team status as a tight end and was first-team defensive back.

As good as he is on the gridiron and the diamond, Rutledge, who was a first-team all-league outfielder, just might be at his best on the wrestling mat. This past winter, he put together a 38-3 record, advancing through the 189-pound bracket at Mat Classic to meet East Valley-Spokane’s Clete Hanson in the finals. Rutledge hung tough before Hanson pulled out a 6-2 decision.

“I guess you could say I did what I could,” Rutledge said. “I wrestled hard, it just didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to turn out. My approach (to a bout) is usually physical. That’s what I do, and it didn’t work out very well.”

His success was no surprise to Auburn wrestling coach John Aiken.

“He’s pretty athletic, he’s a competitor in whatever he does, and he’s 18 years old. Put them together, and he’s quite a guy,” Aiken said.

“What he did this year was step into a leadership role,” Aiken said. “His peers respect him for what he’s able to do when he’s out there competing. When he tells them what the deal is, they pay attention to him.”

For Rutledge, Mat Classic is an event like no other. And wrestling is an athletic pursuit like no other.

“It gets kind of brutal – I like to think of it as a fight with no punching,” Rutledge said. “The crowd gets wild up in the stands, there’s lots of controversy with calls. But above all, that’s the most physically demanding with all that’s going on.

“I don’t feel anything like I do during wrestling.”

It’s the sport in which Rutledge has competed the longest, having started when he was 4. But it’s also one with which he probably is finished. His next stop is Central Washington University for football and a planned major in history.

He knew long ago that he wanted to go to Central, since that’s where his uncle went. What he didn’t know – even at the start of last season – was that he’d wind up putting on the pads for the Wildcats.

“It was pretty much last-minute, because I’d rather play football than wrestle,” Rutledge said. “At the very start, I didn’t plan on doing any sports in college.”

A video-game buff who loves hanging out with 4-year-old brother Easton, Rutledge’s dream job is teaching history (“It’s pretty much the only subject that never really bored me,” said Rutledge, who has a particular love for American history and studying the two world wars) and coaching football or wrestling.

Expect him to have the same mindset for that as he does for his sports – all three of them.

“For the most part, I approach everything the same,” Rutledge said. “I go out and give every event all I have.

“Whatever is left over after that is what’s left.”

For Garrett Rutledge, that’s why things usually all turn out for the better.