Wile was the scoring leader on the outstanding 1943 team that had only a 7-7 tie with Benton to otherwise mar a perfect season. That 1943 team gained world-wide attention with the 188-0 win over Fairfield in which Wile scored 88 points. Football was Wile’s strongest sport, lettering four years.

After graduation from high school, he attended Evansville College for one year, lettering in football as a halfback. He transferred to Tulsa University where he lettered his sophomore and junior years. He devoted his senior year to studies only.

Wile participated on three North Egypt Conference Champion Salem teams in 1940, 1941 and 1943. In 1942, with a 5-1 NEC record, Salem finished second to Flora.

Salem teams, during his four years, had a 26-6-2 record and were 22-2 in conference play. He was a teammate with previously inducted Bob Scoles on the team that had an 8-1 record in 1941, winning the Conference Championship, 6-0, and contributed to the 13-12 win over Centralia.

Wile was selected to the Champaign News-Gazette All-State team his senior year in high school and was named captain of the All-State team. Co-incidentally, he has a younger brother, Dan, who also was a star full-back for the Wildcats, particularly on the outstanding team of 1953, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995.

Wile retired after 31 years with Dow Chemical. He married the former Ann Lyons and they have two sons, Don and John, and a daughter, Cathy.

Twice a unanimous first team choice for all North Egypt Conference honors, Scoles’ senior year was particularly outstanding as the Wildcats finished with an 8-1 record and won the championship with a 6-0 mark. The year before the Wildcats had tied with Flora for conference top honors, each with 5-0-1 marks, tying 7-7 in their head-to-head meeting.

1941 was to be a banner year as they opened with three successive shutouts, including a 7-0 victory over Flora, with Scoles scoring the touchdown in the last two minutes. Only Fairfield scored on the Wildcats in conference play in a 46-6 Salem win. In the opener at Lawrenceville, Scoles scored the first two touchdowns in a 20-0 win. The games at Mt. Carmel and Olney, 26-0 and 2-0 wins, were much publicized “mud baths” as pouring rain turned the fields into quagmires.

In the much publicized meeting with Centralia, billed as a duel between Scoles and Dwight Edleman, each scored two touchdowns but it was Scoles’ “battering ram” style that dominated the game with Salem having a ball possession edge of 57-24 plays.

Named with Scoles to the 1941 All-NEC Team from Salem were end Roy Gatewood, guard Kenny Roberts and tackle Leo Roberts. In 1940, named with Scoles to the first team was the late Henry “Red” Hinkley, a halfback.

After graduation, Scoles followed his high school coach to Illinois Wesleyan where Van Howe had been named coach. Scoles started at fullback as a freshman, scoring both touchdowns in a 13-0 opening win over Eureka. The Wesleyan roster was dotted with former Salem players-besides Scoles, Bill Finks, Herman Howard, Lawrence Chapman and Carl Gatewood were also listed. In a 26-0 loss to Toledo, Scoles and Howard were both injured; Scoles’ injury virtually ending his collegiate career.

After service in the Air Force during World War II, Scoles entered Tulsa University, where another promising freshman from Salem, Jim Finks, was about to embark on an outstanding career. Again, injuries forced Scoles from action.

Bob Scoles also participated in basketball and track while in high school and was a member of the 1939-40 State Basketball Team which was also inducted into the SCHS Hall of Fame.

He is now retired from General Motors and lives in Salem with his wife, the former Charlotte Jett.

With military service twice interrupting his coaching tenure, Michael E. Lenich coached Salem basketball teams from 1938-1941 and from 1947-1951. He holds the distinction of coaching the first Salem team to the State Tournament in 1940. That team compiled a 26-6 record and reached the quarter finals before dropping a 34-30 decision to Champaign.

A graduate of Hurst High School in 1931, where he was a four-letter winner in both football and basketball, Lenich graduated from SIU at Carbondale where he earned four letters in basketball and three in football.

Lenich’s Salem teams won back-to-back North Egypt Conference Championships in 1946-47 and 1947-48. In his first stint, the Wildcats compiled a 49-26 record, and from 1946 through 1951, they had an 88-58 mark. During that period, their best won-lost mark was 27-3 in 1947-48.

Lenich retired from coaching in 1951 upon re-entering the service. He retired from the Air Force in 1970 as a Colonel while at Grissom Air Force Base, Peru, Indiana. He and his wife had two children, Robert and Ann.

He has two brothers, Steve of Joliet, who participated in athletics at Salem and later also coached here; Bill, of Kirkwood, Missouri; and two sisters, Zora Zelko and Katheryn Larson, both of Joliet.

Salem teams in Farrar’s first two seasons were 12-0 in conference play, netting back-to-back crowns. Overall those two years, Salem’s record was 15-1-1.

Only a 7-7 tie marred an otherwise perfect season in 1943, but one game that year vaulted the Wildcats into world-wide prominence. With so many Salem alumni serving around the world in World War II, Salem’s 188-0 win over Fairfield was read by Salem servicemen in major papers in Texas, California, Hawaii and London.

The Wildcats also won conference championships in 1947 with a 6-0 league mark and in 1949 with a 5- 0-1 record. Three other years the Wildcats were 51 in conference play but finished second in a strong North Egypt Conference. In those three seasons, 1945, 1946, and 1950, they had overall records of 8-1,
8-2, and 8-1.

In the chief rivalry of the Wildcats with Centralia, after scheduling was resumed in 1945 following a three-year hiatus, Farrar’s teams came out on top, 4-3, scoring three shut-out victories.

Farrar also served two stints as Wildcat basketball coach, taking over for the 1943-44 season with the Wildcats posting a 25-10 record and reaching the sectional finals. The 1944 regional victory marks the last time a Salem team has tasted that type of victory.

From 1943-46, Farrar’s basketball record at the Wildcat helm was 66-38. He again took over in 1951 as basketball coach when Coach Mike Lenich was recalled to the service for a second time. Farrar resigned as coach in January, 1952, following the first Annual Salem Invitational Tournament.

A graduate of Monmouth College, Farrar is married to the former Wanda Brasel and they have two sons – Ken, a developer in Denver, and Bill, a surgeon in Columbus, Ohio. The Farrars now reside in Sun City West, Arizona.

The team that turned the Southern Illinois basketball world on its ear and sent the townspeople of Salem into an ecstatic frenzy was a 1986 inductee into the Salem Sports Hall of Fame. The 1939-40 Salem High School basketball team, the first Salem team to advance to the State Tournament, stunned the basketball world with their 46-37 win over Centralia in the sectional final to win the trip to the “Sweet Sixteen.”

The team, that posted a 29-6 record that season, was composed of Gerald Brubaker, Bill Finks, Dickie Gray, Elton “Rabbit” Meredith, Daryl Robb, Henry Hinkley, Jim Meador, Max McGraw, Bob Scoles and Jim Somer, and their coach, Mike Lenich. Unfortunately, five of those players – Gray, Brubaker, Hinkley, Meador and McGraw – and Coach Mike Lenich are deceased.

The highlight of the season was undoubtedly the sectional win over Centralia, played at Centralia, that sent the Wildcats on their first Champaign trip. Salem had lost to Centralia in the regional championship, 42-40, but, in those days, the runner-up also advanced to an eight-team sectional.

Salem not only won the rematch but they won convincingly, leading the strong Centralians at halftime, 20-3. Much of that success was the defensive blanket put on the· acknowledged star of the Centralia team, Dwight Edleman, by Robb that kept Edleman scoreless in the first half.

The scoring in the game was left to Finks, Gray and Meredith, with Brubaker joining Robb in concentrating on defense, which proved a successful maneuver as Salem led after the first quarter, 12-0.

In the State Tournament, Salem won their opener over Beardstown, the winner of the Quincy Sectional, 55-29, despite three regulars fouling out-one in the first half. Salem was edged in the quarter-final game by Champaign, 34-30. The Wildcats made a fourth quarter comeback, closing to within 27-24 early in the period, but their 11-7 scoring edge left them short.

That 1939-40 Salem team finished second in the North Egypt Conference, second in the Mt. Vernon Holiday Tournament, won by Granite City, and second in the Regional Tournament and first in the Sectional.

Scoring leaders for the season were Meredith-421 points; Gray-312; Flnks256; Robb-204; and Brubaker-164. Gray was selected to the All-State Second Team by the Associated Press coaches panel at the State Tournament.

A side note of that year’s State Tournament: The play-by-play announcer for WILL covering the tournament was Fred Corray, a former Salem coach, and an inductee to the Sports Hall of Fame in1985.

The late H. B. Davis, who was one of the more avid Salem fans and also the longtime sponsor of the school paper, The Broadcaster, engineered a special edition of the paper that came out on Sunday afternoon, following the Saturday night Sectional victory.