Mike Harding was Ainsworth High School’s best football player his senior year.
Then he was the Spartans’ best basketball player.
Then he was their best baseball player.
He wasn’t merely a big fish in a small pond. At a smaller school, it’s not uncommon for one athlete to be the star player in every sport.
But Ainsworth was a Class A school when Harding was a senior in the 1963-64 school year. In all three sports, he was chosen the team’s Most Valuable Player. He was a first-team All-Big Nine Conference selection in basketball and baseball.
“I didn’t play to be Most Valuable Player,” Harding said. “I played to win every game I could.”
Playing three sports in high school went so well that Harding figured he could pull it off in college when he transferred to Hillsdale College after a year on the Western Michigan University baseball team.
He had success in each sport in his first year at Hillsdale, starting at defensive back in football, leading the basketball team in assists and earning NAIA All-State as a baseball shortstop.
But it was a pace he couldn’t sustain.
“I couldn’t keep it up,” he said. “It was tough.
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