Now two years into his University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football career, Zion Rutledge has always prided himself on trying to be a leader of whatever unit he has been part of with the Mocs.
Special teams, scout team, it didn’t matter for Rutledge.
He always found a way to use his voice to challenge teammates to match the sort of intensity and effort that the 5-foot-11, 226-pound linebacker and former state champion wrestler was bringing in practice. It sometimes led to dustups, but for Rutledge it was simply about trying to maintain the standard.
“Two of the greatest lessons I learned from wrestling was about technique and accountability,” Rutledge said earlier this year as the Mocs went through spring practices. “It’s always best to play in a sport where you’re just alone and you’ve got to do it on your own, because when you’re out there with that singlet and it’s just you and that other guy, you can’t really blame anybody else.”
Rutledge made the choice entering college to study engineering, which brought its own set of challenges. (It also gave him another parallel to former UTC defensive back Reuben Lowery III, a senior last season whose major was mechanical engineering and, like Rutledge, graduated from Hillgrove High School in Powder Springs, Georgia.)