Keith Young wanted to be a basketball
player, overlooking the fact he was 5-foot-9, 135 pounds at a high school
renowned for producing major college talent and state championship
teams.
Steve Branch felt his pain – he was also
cut during basketball tryouts at Flint Northern.
Michael Bowen wanted to play football, but
rarely got on the field as a junior varsity player in 10th grade. Ronald
Whitner also got his start in football.
Cross country?
Racing for three miles didn’t sound all
that appealing.
Branch didn’t come out for cross country
until his senior year, but only “reluctantly. I ran track the year before. I
was told if I wanted to run track the next year, I had to run cross country,
so that’s how I started with it.”
They would soon learn to embrace this
strange new sport under the guidance of famed Northern coach Norb Badar, who
could guarantee them
at least 15 minutes of playing time racing
three miles for the Vikings.
This group of castoffs from other sports
put Northern on the state cross country map, winning the 1974 state Class A
championship one year after placing fourth in the state meet.
Forty-five years later, they are part of
the 40th class of inductees in the Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame. Two
members of the team were already in the Hall of Fame as individual
inductees. Badar was inducted in 1986 and Young was enshrined in 2010.
“I felt a little guilty when I went in as
an individual, because all of those workouts and all of those miles we put in,
I didn’t do it by myself,” Young said. “It’s nice to see those guys getting
the recognition, because we all worked out. If not for them, I don’t think I
would’ve been in. What’s special
about this one is all those guys, all the
hard work and blood, sweat and tears are finally getting recognized for that.”
Young was the leader of the team, winning
the individual state championship with a time of 14 minutes, 37.1 seconds.
But state championships in cross country
aren’t won by having the brightest star in the race. The strength of the
Vikings’ team was a four-man pack that finished within nine places and
11.5 seconds of one another to ensure a 74-104 victory over runner-up St.
Joseph.
Ron Whitner was 15th out of 124 runners in
the team race in 15:35, Bowen was 16th in 15:36, John Halford was 18th in 15:39
and Steve Branch was 24th in 15:46.5.
Also running in the state meet were Anthony
Sullivan, who was 78th in 16:34.5, and Richard MacInnes, who was 84th in
16:37.2.
“We knew Keith would do well,” Bowen said.
“We didn’t know we would come in in a group like we did. Jackson had three
people up in the front, but their fourth and fifth man were way
back. We came in as a group. I was just trying to do my best to come in where I
could.
“Keith won state the year before. We wanted to be there and bring it in for him.
Coach Badar never put it in our heads we were going to be state champs, but we
kind of came out that day thinking we had all the potential.”
Branch became separated from the main pack, but made a surge that ensured
the Vikings would win the state championship.
“Coach Badar said if I ran in a certain place, we should win the meet,” Branch
said. “With a half mile to go, a guy told me I was in 50th place. Coach told me I
needed to be in 25th place, so I caught all those people and ended up in 24th place
in that last half mile.”
Many of the runners on the cross country team came to Northern hoping to add
to the school’s legacy of state championships in other sports.
“I went out for the basketball team and made it to the final cut,” Young said. “That
upset me. I knew I had the skills to make it. I went out for track and was getting in
shape so there wasn’t an excuse to cut me again.”
Bowen said he was a “football reject” who came under the coaching of Badar
while competing in track and field his sophomore year.
“I played football, but he asked me if I was going to be playing or starting,” Bowen
said. “I said, ‘Probably not.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you come out for cross country?’
I’m thinking three miles is a little bit too long for me. We used to run on the third
floor of Northern High School doing our training in winter time. I saw where I had
the potential to be a middle-distance runner, because I ran 880, 440 in track. Cross
country was going to help me do better. He was like a father, he was a coach, he
wasn’t like a drill instructor. He just made us realize our potential.”
Northern hadn’t qualified for a state meet since placing fourth in 1956 when the
Vikings made it in 1973. A fourth-place finish just made the Vikings hungrier to win
it all the following year.
“Out of the seven on that team in ’73, four were juniors and three were seniors,”
Young said. “We had that nucleus coming back for the ’74 season. Then we had
newcomers who just blended in perfectly. It was just a magical season. We came
into the season ranked No. 1 and just held that position all year long.
“During that time, the cross country teams were very competitive. There was
Kearsley, Grand Blanc, Grosse Pointe North and Ann Arbor Pioneer, so it was pretty
competitive around the state, even in this area. With that No. 1 ranking, everyone
was going after us.”
One of the newcomers in 1974 was Branch, who soon bonded with his teammates
during a summer of team-led evening training runs throughout the streets of Flint.
“We basically were told the first of June our goal was to run 1,000 miles over
the summer,” Branch said. “So, every evening in the summer, we got together as a
team and we got out and got our miles in. When we got back to fall training for cross
country, coach Badar was a little surprised that we were all in pretty good shape. He
knew then that we were pretty much ready to run.”
The 1974 Northern team was the last state boys cross country champion from
the Flint Community Schools. Flint Central won state championships in 1937, 1939, 1941 and 1958.
