One of the finest three-sport athletes ever to hail from Hart, Fred Stevens went on to become a sports legend at Western Michigan Normal (now Western MIchigan University) in Kalamazoo.  From 1936 to 1940, Stevens was without argument Hart High School’s finest all-around athlete.  In football he first starred at end, then finished his career as a triple-threat quarterback.  He captained and led the Hart basketball team in scoring in four years with the varsity cagers.  He also starred as a hard-hitting first baseman on the baseball team.

Stevens enrolled at Western Michigan in the fall of 1940 and immediately resumed his three-sport brilliance for Bronco teams.  He was a halfback on the 1941 undefeated football squad, a forward on the basketball team and a first baseman on the baseball team.  The war years temporarily interrupted his collegiate sports career; he served in the US Navy until his discharge at war’s end.  Stevens returned to Western and finished up his college eligibility in the spring of 1946 with a flourish in his favorite sport – baseball.  Stevens had another fine season and became the school’s first genuine All-American in any major sport.  He was team captain and first baseman and was selected to play in the East-West College All-Star game at Boston’s Fenway Park.

Stevens bypassed offers to play professional baseball and returned to WMU and joined the Bronco coaching staff as an assistant in the major sports and as head coach of freshman teams.  His thorough knowledge of all sports and his ability to teach fundamentals made him a major contributor to the athletic programs for the next 19 seasons.  He concluded up his “official” coaching duties as assistant baseball coach in 1986, but he continued to dispense his sports expertise in a voluntary role after retirement.

Stevens was inducted into the WMU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1980 and was named “Man of the Year” by the WMU Alumni “W” Club in 1984.