By Dan Nilsen
Early in the spring of 1976, Flint Northern High boys track coach Norb Badar made the comment that his Vikings were “the best balanced team I’ve ever had.”
It was a bold statement, given that Badar already had two state championship teams at Northern and that he was putting his current squad under pressure to make it three.
But Badar’s analysis proved accurate, and his Vikings met the challenge with a strong season, culminating in a Class A state championship. That title has earned the 1976 Northern track team entry into the Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame.
The balance factor was evident from the beginning. The Vikings had speed from the 100-yard dash to the 2-mile run, with more talent in between.
An early sign came in mid-April at the prestigious Mansfield Relays, where sophomore sprinter Michael Miller placed fourth in the 100 in 9.7 seconds and third in the 220 in 20.8.
Four weeks earlier in the MITCA state indoor meet, senior Calvin McQueen, in just his second year running track and with one season of cross country under his belt, won the 2-mile in 9:20.5.
“Mr. Badar had a knack for training minority athletes for distance running, where others couldn’t,” McQueen said. “He moved me from the quarter-mile to the half-mile to the mile to the 2-mile. We just followed instructions and the results came out great.”
Indeed, Badar and his Vikings had just won a state Class A cross country championship the previous school year, led by state champion Keith Young, another Badar protege.
Northern also had a strong half-miler in Richard MacInnes, hurdles speed in Ed Taylor and scoring potential in all three relays.
Through the rest of April and May, the Vikings won the West Bloomfield Invitational, the Mott Relays, the Saginaw Valley Conference West Division and the Greater Flint Invitational, later to be renamed the Badar Classic.
With their success came a reputation and a nickname.
“We were known as the Badar Boys,” said McQueen. “Other coaches called us that. It made other teams leery and fearful of us. We were proud to be Badar Boys.”
Their only stumble came in the regional meet at Houston Stadium, where a dropped baton in the 440 relay cost the Vikings the outright title and the loss of a relay team that might have placed at state.
“We had to put in an inexperienced runner when Ed Taylor hurt his leg,” Badar said at the time. “Then we violated a cardinal rule by releasing the baton before it was secured.”
But the Vikings still tied Northwestern for the regional title with 48 points each and put together a strong contingent for the state meet.
Taylor had already qualified third in both the 120-yard high hurdles and the 180 lows before pulling out of the 440 relay. Also qualifying third for state were Greg Loue in the shot put and MacInnes, Ken Bray, James Allen and Terry Lane in the mile relay. The 880 crew of Charles Davis, Allen, Dan Greene and Miller qualified second.
Three Vikings were regional champions: MacInnes in the 880 in 1:56.4. Miller in the 220 in a regional-record 21.1 and in the 100 in a record-tying 9.7. McQueen won the 2-mile in 9:18, tying the meet record and setting a Northern record that will stand forever since American track adopted the metric system a few years later.
At the state meet, in 85-degree heat at Grand Rapids’ Houseman Field, the Vikings got off to a hot start, placing third in the 880 relay in 1:27 “That was the start of the meet, and they set the marker right there,” said McQueen. “After that, everybody started going and scoring points. It motivates you.”
MacInnes followed with a victory in the 880 in 1:55.3. One event later, Taylor tied for second in the 120 high hurdles in 14.6.
Miller placed second in the 100 in 9.9 and won the 220 in 21.6. McQueen took third in the 2-mile in 9:25.1.
Northern finished with 44 points, ahead of defending state champion Southwestern with 35. It was the sixth time that Flint schools finished 1-2 in the state meet.
“I could tell they were ready today,” Badar told Flint Journal sports writer Len Hoyes after the meet. “They wanted to win badly. I knew we had it with two events to go.”
The Vikings felt it, too, as McQueen recalled.
“A couple of trainers were keeping score and they were saying, ‘We got it, we got it.’ It’s great when you see a team come together at that moment, on that day, at that time. You just put everything together and you come out victorious.”
Badar went on to win his fourth state track title in 1979, which would be the last for him and Northern. He was an individual inductee in the Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame in 1986. He died in 2014 at age 89.
Miller was inducted in 2022. He and McQueen wound up at Tennessee together, joining Keith Young and giving the Vols the kind of sprint/distance balance they had at Northern.
