AUBURN, Wash. – Before he became a sensation as the nation’s leading apprentice, and long before he became a trainer with the audacity to beat the Europeans on their own turf, Wesley Ward was a scrappy kid in small-town Washington with outsized dreams and a smile that could light up a room. On Saturday night at Emerald Downs, Northwestern horsemen will salute a native son when Ward is inducted into the Washington Racing Hall of Fame. Ward, 47, headlines a 2015 class that includes jockey Gary Boulanger, horses Travel Orb and Ropersandwranglers, and breeder Herman Sarkowsky. Boulanger captured three consecutive riding titles at Longacres and shattered Gary Stevens’s record for wins in a season. Travel Orb was the state’s Horse of the Year in 1965 and 1966, and Ropersandwranglers won 10 stakes races at Emerald Downs. Sarkowsky bred and raced three state champions and campaigned 1993 Eclipse Award-winning 2-year-old filly Phone Chatter. Ward’s greatest achievements have come farther afield. He never rode regularly in the Northwest, and while his training career began at Yakima Meadows in 1990, he had embarked to Southern California by 1992 and never came back. But Ward’s Washington roots run deep. He grew up in Selah, a farming town in the state’s arid heartland, and guided by his father, Dennis Ward, started riding Thoroughbreds at age 11. By age 12, Ward was competing, and winning, at fair meets throughout the region. At 16, he was the toast of New York, winning riding titles at Belmont Park, Aqueduct, and the Meadowlands. “I ended up fulfilling a dream, going from the small tracks in Washington – Okanogan, Waterville, Republic – and galloping horses in the summer at Longacres, to going right off the bat on my 16th birthday to New York and winning the Eclipse Award,” Ward said Thursday from Lexington, Ky. “I came from humble beginnings, way out in the valley in Selah. I collected all the Racing Forms when I was a kid and dreamed of going to the bigger tracks. My only interest has been racing; I’ve never golfed a day in my life, never done anything else. So, a lifetime achievement like this is just unbelievable.” Ward still laughs about his first baby steps in the training profession in 1990. “I’d had so much success as a rider, I thought once I make a big announcement that I would be a trainer, that all I had to do is show up,” he said. “But it didn’t happen that way. The phone never rang. I didn’t know how to get started. So, I threw an ad in the Washington Thoroughbred for breaking horses, and I started to get some responses. Some people left me horses that didn’t have trainers, and things grew from one horse, to two, to four, and then after about a year, I went to Southern California and told myself I was never going to leave.” He did leave eventually – he now lives in Florida horse country with his wife and three kids – and his standing as one of the sport’s leading trainers continues to grow on both sides of the Atlantic. Ward said Undrafted’s victory in the Group 1 Diamond Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot in June was his proudest training achievement. Getting a trophy from the queen was a thrill. On Saturday, if he can make it to Seattle, he’ll receive a less spectacular but perhaps no less meaningful prize. “I’m really trying hard to make it,” Ward said Thursday. “Unfortunately, I’ve got a couple of horses heading over to York in England, and I’m here at Keeneland, where they breezed yesterday. I’ve got horses at Saratoga, too. But if I can make it out there, I would love to do that. I’m working on it.” If not, Bryson Cooper, a friend and former riding colleague, will read some words prepared by Ward, who made a bunch of lifelong friends during his formative years in the Northwest. “I broke horses that first summer for Mike Chambers, and I was close with Bud Klokstad and Benny Harris,” Ward said. “I know all the older trainers; I worked horses for all those guys in the early ’80s. I’ve been dear friends with Mike Puhich – I won the Longacres Derby for him – and the Penneys and Bryson Cooper were close friends as well, plus all of the McCannas. And I had one guy who was always my idol growing up. That was Gary Baze, a guy who woke up every day and always tried to do the right thing. He’s a special, unique kind of guy to look up to. That’s how I try to live my life.”