In the first four years baseball was a league sport in the North Egypt Conference, the Salem Wildcats won the title every year.

The 1954 squad began that streak of dominance and as a result earned selection to the Salem Community High School Sports Hall of Fame.

The 1954 Wildcats, coached by Sam Bliss, were one of the most successful squads in school history. They went 15-3 overall and won the NEC title with a 10-2 record.
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The 1949 SCHS Wildcat football team, while lacking some of the size of earlier teams and much smaller than later teams that carried the banner, had a quickness and hard-hitting quality that led them to a 7-1-1 record. The 1949 team, tied 7-7 by Lawrenceville in the season opener, gained a Co-Championship of the North Egypt Conference with Lawrenceville with a 5-0-1 1eague record.

The 1949 team, with three members· Bob Bishop, Charles “Bud” Parker and Bill Spratt, previously inducted into the Salem High Sports Hall of Fame, were involved in close games all through their schedule. Only a 25-0 win over Bridgeport, following the tie with Lawrenceville, and a 26-7 victory over Fairfield could be considered “cake walks.”
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Recognized as one of the top football teams in SCHS history, the 1946 Wildcats inducted in 1993 compiled an 8-1 record, outscored their opponents 216-25 and rolled up 2,594 yards from scrimmage. The Wildcats finished second in the North Egypt Conference, losing to Flora, 12-0, in the third game of the season. The only other scores against the Wildcats were in the 13-6 opening win at Lawrenceville and in the closing 20-7 win over Mt. Vernon.

With a strong line of Bud Alderson and Arlin Wade at tackle; Bill Chance and Richard Laney at guard; and Glenn Holler at center, the Wildcats had the protection to unleash the speed of Bill Hooks who scored 22 touchdowns, and the power of Gay Thomason and Carle Blackwell to dominate their opponents.
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A team that generated high hopes for its followers and confirmed some of those hopes with a 23-5 record and a forth Egypt Conference Championship.

Although they opened and closed with losses, Coach Walt Kirk, Jr. , led his Wildcats, the “Knights of Marion County”, to 23 victories in the intervening 26 games while winning the NEC title with an 11-1 mark.

After the opening loss, Salem started a string of victories with an 81-66 win over Effingham with four players scoring in double figures led by Ed Perry’s 28 points, and following with a 52-51 win over Mt. Vernon as Jack Moore led with 16 points.
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The 1945 Wildcat team was one of the smallest teams in SCHS history, and one of the grittiest.

One of the better football teams in the school’s history, they parlayed quickness and speed with deception to offset their lack of size – the first team average weight was 150 pounds. Usually, their opponents outweighed them on an average of 30-60 pounds per man.

They were an explosive team on offense and stingy on defense, outscoring the opposition 273-60 in a 10-game season. Head coach Kenny Farrar and his assistant, Howard Thurman, stressed physical conditioning, an explosive and deceptive offense, and quickness on defense to offset the lack of size.
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The 1941 Salem football team, North Egypt Conference champions with a 6-0 record, were deemed one of the best teams in the state.

In addition to winning the conference, the first ever outright title for Salem, the Wildcats compiled an 8-1 record, including a 13-12 win over Centralia in a classic “Battle of Marion County” contest. They were also invited to play in the first ever Shriner’s benefit football game, and were the cause of Centralia severing athletic relations with Salem.

Some of this group started the renaissance of Salem football as sophomores on a team that finished 7-1-1, including a 16-0 win over Centralia-the first ever in football for the Wildcats over Centralia. As juniors some of these players tied for the NEC crown with a 5-0-1 mark.
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