Calhoun City wasn’t carved out by a furniture man or dreamed up by timber barons. It rose where the rails and the river met. The Mobile and Ohio line rolled through, and the Skuna bent its way past. The trains brought people. The river gave them work. Lumber mills, cotton gins, stores lining Main Street. From the start, this was a place built on movement and grit.
By the 1920s the town was humming. Sawmills whined. Crops came to market. Folks gathered on the square. But life here was never soft. Fires, floods, and the Depression cut deep. Each time the people rebuilt, stubborn and sure. That edge became the spirit of Calhoun City.
And soon, that spirit had a football team to carry it.
The Wildcats took the field in 1920. The first years were rough. Records are thin, but one score stands out… a 77-point loss that remains the worst in school history. That should have broken them. It didn’t. They kept suiting up, season after season, until the program became part of the town’s backbone.
The 1950s and 60s brought respectability. The Wildcats won more than they lost. But the 70s nearly swallowed the program whole. From 1974 to 1976, Calhoun City dropped 17 straight. Players still showed up. Coaches kept coaching. Fans still filed into the stadium on Friday nights. They endured, and in doing so, they built the toughness that would define the decades to come.
The payoff came in the 1980s. Under Mike Moore, the Wildcats roared. They went 80–31 that decade, capped by the 1989 season when they won the school’s first state championship. Bay Springs fell 28–14, and Calhoun City claimed its place in Mississippi football lore. That night wasn’t just a trophy. It was proof.
The 1990s piled on more wins. District titles. Playoff runs. When Perry Liles took over in 2009, the Wildcats became a machine. Ten seasons. 115 wins. Just 32 losses. Forty-two district victories against only four defeats. The peak came in 2016 with a 15–1 record, another state championship, another conquest of Bay Springs.
And the legacy keeps growing.
M.D. Jennings went from Calhoun City to the Green Bay Packers, and now he’s back home, coaching the next generation. Under Jennings, the Wildcats keep rolling. In 2024 they won another district crown. In 2025 they opened with a 56–0 thrashing of Coffeeville. The bloodline is alive.
Through it all, the heart of the town beats inside “The Bone Yard”. It’s where boys become men. Where the community gathers. Where the pride of a small Mississippi town shows itself in pads and helmets.
Calhoun City has always been a place that fights through the hard years and savors the good ones. A town born by rails and river. A program built on perseverance. From a 77-point loss in 1920 to championships in 1989 and 2016, the Wildcats have lived the same story as their people.
Next Wednesday, we’ll step onto the field. We’ll break down the head-to-head series between Bruce and Calhoun City. In this corner of Mississippi, the rivalry is more than a game. It is a story written over decades, one score at a time.
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