A championship golfer at every level, Life Christian’s Andrew Putnam is the Columbia Bank/TAC Male Athlete of the Year. With a 3.94 grade point average and a comparable golf scoring average to match, Putnam prevailed among an outstanding array of talented student-athletes who were named Athletes of the Month from Pierce County’s 33 high schools this year. He will be playing his college golf at Pepperdine University this year thanks to his NCAA athletic scholarship. Putnam won state high school individual golf championships in 2004, 2006 and 2007, was runner-up in 2005, and led his team to state titles in three of those four years. He is the West Central District champ this year, with a final round score of 65, and won his third state tournament championship by nine strokes with back-to-back rounds of 70 at Lake Padden in Bellingham. His golf honors are many, ranging from State Junior Player of the Year, Pacific Northwest Player of the Year, both in ’06, U.S. Junior Amateur Qualifying Champion, Junior World Qualifying Champion and Semi-Finalist in the USGA Junior Amateur where he narrowly lost to the country’s #1 ranked player and eventual champion. Andrew ranks 23rd in the World and is one of only four players chosen for “Team USA” in the Junior World Cup tournament in Japan. In high school he also has been a three-year varsity basketball player, a member of the National Honor Society, Homecoming King, Bible Study Prayer Leader, and two-time winner of the Headmaster’s Award at Life Christian (Most Outstanding” character, student and athlete). Andrew may be appropriately below par on the golf course most of the time but he is consistently way above par as a student and a citizen. Congratulations Andrew Putnam.(Keep hittin’ ‘em straight and we'll be watching you on the PGA Tour some day with that other Putnam!)