The history of football at North Wales is easily divided into two parts: The 1920s and the 1930s.

The school had its first known games in 1923. North Wales is known to have played five games, two of which were against Fort Washington, which was not yet a four-year high school. Another was against a local pick-up team called the Woodstock All-Stars. For the next two years, the Wildcats played short schedules against mostly new schools.

In 1926, North Wales played its first full schedule, and over the next four seasons, the football team won one game, tied two more and lost all the rest. In 1927, North Wales and other small schools, including East Greenville, Royersford, Collegeville, Conshohocken, Pennsburg and Schwenksville, formed the Montgomery County League, which pre-dated the Bux-Mont League in football. The Wildcats would compete in the league every year they had a football team; several other schools came and went.

The big change in North Wales’ football fortunes occurred when James “Jimmy” Nider became the coach and school athletic director in 1930. For the next nine years, the Wildcats won more games than they lost each season, and were often in the hunt for the Montco League title. One thing that Nider did was begin weekly scrimmages with the larger and more experienced Lansdale High School football team. The two schools played each other once, in 1926, but never officially played again because of the close relationship. The two best seasons were 1931, as North Wales was 9-1 with only a 7-0 loss to Eddystone to mar the perfect record, and 1937, as the Wildcats had their only undefeated season, 5-0-2. (On a sidenote my father, Thomas McLarnon, played for Eddystone High School and lettered in several sports.)

North Wales generally did not play large schools after 1930. For several years, before the Bux-Mont League went to a full round-robin schedule, Souderton was a Thanksgiving Day opponent. The Wildcats also opened their 1939 season with a non-league game at Sell-Perk, in the first night high school football game ever played in Bucks County.

Even in the good years, though, North Wales had to fight the same problem every other small high school did – a lack of numbers. In the 1930s, with one-platoon football, a school could field a decent football team with as few as 15 players on the roster. But that didn’t allow much room for the inevitable injuries. Because of the team’s success, North Wales rarely had a severe problem with numbers – until 1939.

In 1939, the Wildcats were decimated by injuries. They didn’t have to forfeit any games or suspend the season because of a lack of players, as some very small schools did in other years. But the lack of numbers took a toll as North Wales fell to 1-7, its worst season in 10 years.

North Wales planned to field a football team in 1940. But when so few players appeared at pre-season practices that Coach Nider couldn’t even have an intra-squad scrimmage, he saw that there was no way that the school could field a team. He reluctantly canceled the season, in hopes that the Wildcats would return to the football field in 1941. But North Wales never played another football game. By 1942, following in the footsteps of many other very small public schools, the Wildcats were playing soccer in the fall, and no serious attempts were ever made to revive football. Jimmy Nider was the head football coach of Upper Moreland by 1943.