It’s common for a high school's best athletes to play two or more sports, but what Tim Tawa accomplished at Oregon’s West Linn High in football and baseball was a career of historic success.

He was the state’s Gatorade player of year in football three straight years and led West Linn to a state championship win his senior season. He earned the same honor his senior year for baseball after his team lost in the 6A state championship.

“I am very fortunate to have had such a great high school career,” Tawa said. “Looking back on it I have so many memories from championship teams and different moments that I’m going to remember for the rest of my life. It has been a special ride.

“I was always a baseball player in mind before high school football became a big thing. I was offered for baseball before anything happened with football. I feel like baseball is a better fit for me, which is why I like to play it more.”

Football may be second in Tawa’s heart, but Oregon high school quarterbacks will be chasing Tawa’s place in the record books for years to come.

Tawa is the state’s career leader in passing yards with 11,337 yards, touchdown passes with 143 and completions with 714. He finished his senior season one touchdown short of tying the single-season record for passing TDs with 55. He threw for a single-season record of 4,397 yards as a junior.

Tawa’s success on both the gridiron and baseball diamond caused people to ask time and again during the past three years if he planned to play both sports in college. When he signed to go to Stanford there were plenty of examples of great athletes on The Farm who filled their falls and springs with football and baseball.

Tawa is not a prototypical quarterback in height -- he is about six-feet tall and 180 pounds -- but it’s not size or lack of talent keeping him from playing football in college; it’s his choice. His high school’s head football coach, Chris Miller, played the position at Oregon and in the NFL. He has coached as an assistant in the NFL as well.

“He is Russell Wilson to a ‘T’,” Miller said. “They have about the same measurables their senior years in high school and he’s wired just like him. They have similar games.

“He’s a wonderful young man with a tremendous work ethic,” he added about Tim. “He’s highly motivated academically and with athletics. The time he put in studying film and taking notes … he took it very seriously. From an accomplishment standpoint he was the most productive quarterback in the state of Oregon history, period.”

Tawa and West Linn won their state title game 62-7 a year after losing by a touchdown in the championship. It was the perfect way to say farewell to the sport.

“I enjoyed every moment that I was able to play it,” he said. “Winning a state championship was pretty much the final moment. I went out on top and that was it for football. Now it’s time to focus on baseball and getting better for college.”

During Tawa’s sophomore football season Stanford pitching coach Rusty Filter got a call from West Linn baseball coach Joe Monahan, who said that Filter should come back up to the Oregon campus to watch Tawa hit.

Filter and Stanford were already recruiting Tawa’s baseball teammate Will Matthiessen, who signed with Stanford and was a key relief pitcher as a freshman this past season.

Tawa was in the midst of West Linn's first football playoff run in several years and he took some time to hit off a tee for Filter. Later Tawa came home from a football practice to the news that he should call the Stanford coaches.

“Really it’s one of the best experiences of my life to have a school put faith in me to be a player on their team in the future,” he said of receiving a scholarship offer. “A really great moment that I was humbled by and grateful for, I remember it very vividly.”

Tawa played shortstop at West Linn, which is common for a team's best player. He plans to be an outfielder at Stanford but he is open to any path onto the field or into the lineup.

Monahan -- who first saw Tawa when he was six years old playing T-ball -- knew early on that Tawa had the physical and mental ability to get the attention of baseball programs such as Stanford. At that age a coach looks to see if a young player has an advanced natural feel for the game on the field, with the bat, when to take an extra base, etc.

“You saw it all in him,” Monahan said. “Then you start to get into the All-Star teams and Tim was always one of the players that jumped off the field.”

When Tawa was in the sixth grade, Monahan and his parents -- John Tawa and Lisa Dunne -- thought Tim should play above his age level. One of the main reasons Monahan thought Tawa could handle it was he had seen Tawa was mature with how he dealt with failure and learned from it.

Miller and the West Linn football team also benefited from Tawa’s calm demeanor.

“He is comfortable in his own skin,” Miller said. “He’s a confident young man. I think he found his groove in athletics. He’s an extremely mature young man. He is a serious kid and he’s gotten to be a lot more fun loving. It has been fun to watch him evolve. But he’s serious about whatever he does.”

During Tawa's freshman year Monahan talked to John about the attention Tim was going to get from college programs. It was obvious that at some point within the next year or so the recruiting process would start for Tim.

In one of those conversations Monahan remembered Tim's parents explaining how they wanted baseball to get Tim into a top school, and ultimately that was why Stanford became the best fit.

“He’s not just going to go to a regular college,” Monahan recalled. “He is going to go to the best academic college with the best baseball program available.”