The Willow Run High School football team will play the first home playoff game in school history when Grass Lake visits at 7 p.m. Friday night.

The upcoming historical event has brought back some fond memories of the program’s only other MHSAA playoff experience, a Flyer team that reached the Class B state semifinals in 1981.

Darryl Warner, a 1985 Willow Run graduate, recalls being a freshman on the junior varsity team that year and watching the team he strived to one day contribute to.

“At the time, we had strong basketball team, but no one ever looked at us as a football power,” recalls Warner. “But Don Stewart was just a phenomenal coach and that team had some phenomenal athletes in Ira Harrison, Doni Jones and Marty Allison. A great passing, running combination.”

At the time, The Ann Arbor News called Harrison and Jones - who rushed for 1,146 and 986 yards, respectively - the best “one-two punch” in the area, and Allison - who passed for 1,213 yards - the “uppercut.”

Jones would eventually play for Bowling Green State University and Harrison at Michigan Tech.

“We had a lot of exciting athletes on the team,” says Ypsilanti resident Robert Gardner, a defensive back/receiver on the ’81 team. “We were faster than everyone.”

Belleville resident Booker T. Word, a senior offensive lineman/linebacker on the ’81 team remembers creating the holes for Harrison and Jones to run through

“It was a beautiful thing. Coach Stewart, he taught us real well,” says Word, who would later gain notoriety as a prize fighter, winning the USBA light-heavyweight title in 1990, and the IBO intercontinental cruiser weight belt in 1997.

“I remember one play, 35-counter trap. I would pull, take out the defensive end for the back. Those holes were wide open. … Normally on the play Doni would get the ball, he was the fastest on the team, and he would just go.”

Stewart, an All-State quarterback for Willow Run in 1967, returned to coach his alma mater in 1975 after playing at Eastern Michigan. When he arrived, the team had lost 18 consecutive games, a streak that would grow to 27 before his rebuilding project began to take shape.

By 1981, Stewart expected the winless program he took over to be undefeated.

“We never expect to lose any games. Sometimes I’m more optimistic than my players, but this year they are talking 9-0,” Stewart told to The Ann Arbor News on August 27, 1981.

Nine weeks later, and Stewart looked not only to be a miracle worker, but a prophet as the Flyers defeated Dearborn Heights Robichaud 21-13 in the regular season finale to wrap up a perfect season. But it was the Flyers’ 39-20 win in week 3, over Bay City All Saints, that Gardner said was the most significant of the season.

“Bay City, once we beat them, that’s when we thought we had it, like we could really do it,” Gardner says. “They were really good at the time, so to beat them was a big deal.”

Despite going 9-0 and climbing to as high as seventh in the Associated Press rankings, Willow Run wasn’t guaranteed a playoff spot. Unlike in today’s playoff format, where teams automatically qualify by winning a certain number of games, even an undefeated record didn’t guarantee a playoff spot.

“They got it easier than we did, it seems like today most these high schools make the playoffs,” says Word. “We almost didn’t make the playoffs and we were 9-0, but there wasn’t much we could do about it, so we just would go out there and do what we were told to do.”

Once Willow Run was granted a spot, it was matched up with Brooklyn Columbia Central in a game that would be played on the artificial turf of Jackson’s Withington Stadium.

Willow Run had never played on artificial turf, so the University of Michigan allowed the Flyers to practice at Michigan Stadium.

“Michigan allowed us to come up there and they gave us shoes and everything to practice in,” Gardner remembers. “That was nice.”

“That was alright,” Word enthusiastically recalls. “To practice on the field, especially with us being young kids, we loved that.”

Playing on the artificial surface played right to the strength of Willow Run.

“It will be their size versus our speed,” Stewart told the News at the time. “We’re not used to playing teams that big and they’re not used to playing teams with our speed.”

On that day, speed trumped size as Willow Run won 27-12. Before last Friday’s 28-26 win over Manchester, it was Willow Run’s only playoff win ever.

“We had some speedsters on our team. With our speed we tore (Columbia Central) up on that artificial turf,” Word remembers, “I remember them coming out of the dressing room and some guys saying ‘who was number 62.’ I said I was and he said ‘man I still got a headache.’”

“Speed is the common denominator,” says Warner, when comparing the ’81 team and this year’s squad.

Warner would eventually win an NAIA National Championship with Hillsdale College’s football team and star on its track team as well. Now a school psychologist in Dearborn Public Schools, Warner used to be an assistant for the football team and helps to mold the next generation of “speedsters” by helping with speed and conditioning drills in the summer.

“It’s my way of giving back,” Warner says. “ I really enjoy it, and to see them having this success, it brings me back to our teams and how hard we worked.”

The ‘81 team’s run ended in a 36-0 semifinal loss to Farmington Hills Harrison. Whereas the previous week’s field conditions played perfectly into the Flyers’ style, the game against Harrison was played on a snow-covered field where the players could barely get their footing.

“It was 26 degrees, snow on the ground,” recalls Word. “They walked over us like we wasn’t even there. We were just spinning there.”

Had the game been played on artificial turf, who knows what would have happened?

“We would have smoked them,” says Word. “They would have had a hard time keeping up with our speed.”

Pete Cunningham covers sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at petercunningham@annarbor.com, or by phone at 734-623-2561. Follow him on Twitter @petcunningham.