Throughout Kelen Rutz’s life, sports were top priority. The energizing and tattooed multiple-sport athlete plowed through life with a focus on his performance and a penchant for fun. His thirst for adventure and achievement soon tangled into an unhealthy attachment to his identity.
“I was like just give me the ball,” Rutz said. “If I wasn’t playing, I didn’t know who I was.”
Without any moral foundation for living, the Kennewick, Wash., native’s distorted identity left him aimless, a college-aged student-athlete without a care in the world. “I went where I went, I let my tongue fly; I didn’t have any boundaries. I was very selfish; I only did what I wanted to do and didn’t listen to anyone else.”
On the fast track, Rutz had to slam the brakes in 2020 when COVID-19 shut everything down. Without the crutch of sports, Rutz was left exposed to the house of sand he had built.
Idle hands and days left a lonely Rutz looking for answers in all the wrong places: friends, drugs, alcohol, partying. It led down a dark trail of depression, anxiety and continued loneliness. Around that time, Rutz began to search for something spiritual to fill the constant ache and hesitation in his heart.
“It wasn’t the right spiritual,” he said. “I began dabbling in things I shouldn’t have, and it brought me into scary places. Things were moving in my room; I would see things. It would happen all the time, but I just got used to them. I thought I was stuck.”
This torment led to deeper darkness, an oppression of mind and lack of light. “There was zero peace, laughter or joy.”
Not the End-All
Rutz tumbled so far down his dark hole, he considered giving up baseball. But when he returned to campus at Yakima Valley College in Yakima, Wash., in fall 2022 and went to a team meeting, one of the first things he heard his coach say was that baseball was not the end-all.
“He told us, ‘Guys, we’re here to help you grow as men, wherever you need it, even if it’s faith,’” Rutz said. Struck by his openness, Rutz reached out and connected with then-pitching coach Jordan Cameron a few months later. When Cameron called him to dive into further discussion, Rutz was in his car with no phone charger, his battery at 1% and teetering on the brink of shutdown.
But Cameron was not deterred. “He told me that my phone wasn’t going to die because we were talking Jesus.”
Cameron was right. Rutz’s phone was on 1% for two hours.
A week later, on November 9, the conversation still ringing in his heart, Rutz rummaged around his room and pulled out the Bible he received at high school graduation. Though he had never opened it, he never got rid of it, either. He opened at random to a page that held Jeremiah 29:11: “’For I know the plans I have for you’—this is the LORD’s declaration—'plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’”
For the infielder who felt stuck with nowhere to go and no worth, the verse hit its target, and Rutz immediately broke down. Years of pent-up darkness, isolation, and feelings of inadequacy streamed out through tears; the refreshing love of the Lord flooded in.
“The God I would tell people isn’t real came and said, ‘I have plans for you. Now, you’re mine,’” said Rutz.
The Lord had changed his life of darkness and filled it with His light.
“People said, ‘You're different,’ and I said, ‘Good!’” remembered Rutz. “I don't want to be the same person that I was."
As Rutz grew in his faith, he looked for places to serve and share about Jesus. One of the places God directed him was to FCA Multi Sport Camp in Nampa, Idaho.
Intending to serve with baseball, Rutz pivoted when a need came for help with a motocross Huddle.
“I was like, ‘Well dang, I know nothing about motocross. I never rode a bike in my entire life,’” he laughed. “But God was going to put me exactly where He wanted me. The motocross family is so kind; this sport is a family. I’m just like ‘Wow, this is something I needed.’”
For Rutz, who had longed for love and belonging, the camp’s family environment felt like home.
‘’Battle Up”
Camp became a catalyst for the call on Rutz’s life. He began to walk alongside coaches and athletes stuck in the lies of the enemy. He is currently on staff with Tri Cities, Washington FCA.
“I just want to let them know that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life,” Rutz said. “Satan's very sneaky in his schemes. He's going to say, ‘Open this door, it’s going to help you.’ But really, it's helping him.”
For Rutz, life in Jesus is the ultimate yes and amen.
“People ask me, 'Why do you love Jesus so much?’ I say, ‘If you knew what I went through, what I saw, the things I felt and what Jesus did, then you would understand why I'm on fire for God.’"