Whether it was as a player, an assistant coach or a head coach, Jim Koehler was a part of Salem Community High School athletics in five different decades.

A 1966 graduate of SCHS, Koehler was a member of the 1965 Wildcats football team that went 8-1 and won the North Egypt Conference championship. Koehler was a four-year member of the Wildcats football and baseball programs while he was a student at the school.

Koehler returned to his alma mater in 1976 as a world history teacher, a position he held for the next 27 years. A year later he began an eight-year run as the Lady Wildcats basketball coach, a program that was still in its infancy and had just two previous seasons of competition. Under Koehler’s direction Salem won back-to-back North Egypt Conference championships in 1978-79 and 1979-80. His 1978-79 squad had an undefeated regular season of 23-0 and finished 24-1 overall. The 24 wins stood as the school record for 20 years. Koehler had an overall record of 103-84.

Koehler had two stints as the Lady Wildcats softball coach, 1979 and 1985-91. His 1979 squad won the NEC championship, a district title and advanced to the sectional championship game where The Lady Wildcats lost to Cahokia. Salem won a regional championship when Koehler returned to the program in 1985 and added another NEC crown to his resume in 1989. That season the Lady Wildcats had a perfect conference season and also won the NEC Conference Tournament.

Koehler served as a varsity assistant and freshmen football coach from 1991-2002. During his time with the program Salem won NEC co-championships in 1992 and 1993 along with an outright crown in 1997. Koehler was also a part of eight Salem football playoff teams.

Besides what he accomplished in athletics, Koehler was involved with the SCHS Prom and began the tradition of announcing the arrival of the Prom attendees. He also helped sponsor Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

At the time of his induction into the Salem High Sports Hall of Fame, Koehler resides in Salem with his wife, Angie.

Scott Steward put together a 34-year stay at Salem Community High School that included 23 seasons with the Wildcats football program, 15 seasons with the baseball program and 27 years as the school’s athletic director.

Steward, who had played football at Saint Joseph’s College in Indiana, arrived in Salem in 1988 after having served as a graduate assistant football coach at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Steward served as an assistant football coach with the Wildcats for two seasons before he was promoted to head coach in 1990. By the time Steward stepped down from that position after the 2010 campaign he had become the program’s winningest coach with a career mark of 108-92. During that run his teams won three North Egypt Conference championships with shared titles in 1991 and 1992 and an outright title in 1997 with a perfect 7-0 record. His teams qualified for the state playoffs ten times. At the time of his 2023 SCHS Hall of Fame induction Steward was one of just two coaches in the program’s history to win a playoff game, which his 1991 squad accomplished with a 20-10 first-round victory over Highland. Steward was inducted into the Illinois High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2013.

Besides the three NEC championships his teams won on the gridiron, Steward was part of two more NEC winners with the Wildcats baseball team with titles won in 1989 and 1996.

Steward moved into the school’s athletic director role in 1995 and held that position until his retirement from the school in 2022. During that time Steward helped navigate the school through the difficult process of moving from the North Egypt Conference to the Apollo Conference after the NEC dissolved in 2003 and again from the Apollo Conference to its current home in the Cahokia Conference in 2017. The school hosted numerous IHSA postseason events under his direction and also served as chairman of the SCHS Sports Hall of Fame committee. Steward served on the IHSA Athletic Administrators Advisory Board, the AD HOC Committee on state football playoffs and AD HOC Committee to review policy and procedures. He has worked as a volunteer at the IHSA state bass fishing competition and has served on the Bass Fishing Advisory Committee, and received a distinguished service award from the IHSA for his work with the Bass Tournament. Steward also served on the Schutt Sports Advisory Committee twice.

Steward was awarded the Division 3-4A Illinois Athletic Director of the Year for the 2015-16 school year, the SIBOA Athletic Director of the Year five times, the Illinois Principals Association Kaskaskia Division Athletic Director of the Year twice and the SCHS Teacher of the Year in 2018. He is also a member of the Lowell High School Sports Hall of Fame.

After Steward retired from SCHS in the spring in 2022, he rejoined the work force later that year when he became athletic director at Kaskaskia College.

At the time of his SCHS Sports Hall of Fame induction in 2023, Steward and his wife, Tracie, resided in Salem where they raised daughters Megan and Mallory and son Cole Steward.

A state qualifier and school record setter during his time at Salem Community High School, 1977 graduate Doug Hargis has continued that athletic success as a coach at the junior high level.

Hargis carried a heavy athletic workload during his high school days as he participated in baseball, cross country, football, track and basketball. His biggest athletic success came in track where he was a member of Salem’s 4X800 relay team that qualified for state during his 1976 junior season. As a senior in 1977, he qualified for state as an individual in the 880-yard run.

Hargis set the school record in the 880-yard run, now 800 meters, during his senior season. That record held for 22 years until 1999. He was also a member of the 4X800 relay team that established a school record in 1977. That mark would hold for 30 years until it was broken in 2007. He received Salem’s Best Runner Award for the 1977 season.
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Already a member of the Salem Sports Hall of Fame as a player on the 1977 Lady Wildcats volleyball team, Mary (Pitts) Brimberry earned individual selection through a stellar coaching career at South Central High School.

At the time of her induction, Brimberry had spent 23 seasons on the sideline as the Lady Cougars volleyball coach. Brimberry began her stint in 1994 and during her coaching run she has compiled a record of 547-177, a highly impressive .756 winning percentage. Her teams have compiled 17 20-win seasons, three 30-win seasons, and ten Class A/Class 1A regional championships. Her 2004 team won a school record 34 games, while her 2011 team won the program’s first sectional championship and advanced to the Class 1A Elite Eight. Prior to the school’s move to the National Trail Conference, Brimberry’s teams won nine Midland Trail Conference regular season championships and ten MTC Tournament titles. Only once in those 23 years with Brimberry at the helm has South Central had a losing season.

Brimberry has also been a winner off the court as she overcame a battle with cancer that forced her to miss the 2014 volleyball season. She returned to the court in 2015.
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Kirby Phillips had already enjoyed coaching success with the Salem Wildcats football underclassmen when he became the head coach of the boys track program in 1985. Two year later Phillips added head coach of the Wildcats and Lady Wildcats cross country teams to his duties. When Phillips stepped away from those positions after the 2001-02 school year, he had taken each of those programs to heights not previously achieved.

While his first Salem boys track team in 1985 came up short at the North Egypt Conference Meet, his squads came back to win the title in each of the next 16 seasons. Phillips’ greatest success with the Wildcats track program came in 1999 when Salem grabbed a share of the Class AA Murphysboro Sectional championship. That remains as the program’s only sectional title. That 1999 team later finished fourth at the state meet. During Phillips’ track tenure Salem qualified more than 30 individuals and 15 relay teams for the Class AA state meet in a two-class system.
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When Janet Holst-Behrens arrived in Salem in 1995, she also inherited a Lady Wildcat basketball program that had posted just one winning season in the previous 14 years. Twenty-one years later Holst-Behrens has built a model of consistent success and took the program to levels it had never reached before.

Prior to her stop at Salem, Holst had put together a highly successful stint at Newcomb, New Mexico where she compiled a 134-60 record during her eight seasons there, which included four straight 20 win seasons. It took a little while for Holst to rebuild the Salem program, as her first three teams combined for a 33-46 record. Starting in the 1998-99 season her teams had winning campaigns in 17 of the next 18 years, which included twelve 20 win seasons. Her teams won six conference championships, a run that began when it claimed the North Egypt Conference championship in 1999 when it compiled a perfect 14-0 record. That was the first conference title for the Lady Wildcats in 20 years. After Salem moved to the Apollo Conference for the 2003-2004 school year, her teams won the title in 2005, 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2012.
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