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Rail Transportation
Amtrak, the national passenger rail system, provides service to Centralia. Amtrak Train 59, the southbound City of New Orleans, is scheduled to depart Centralia at 12:25am daily with service to Carbondale, Fulton, Newbern-Dyersburg, Memphis, Greenwood, Yazoo City, Jackson, Hazlehurst, Brookhaven, McComb, Hammond, and New Orleans. Amtrak Train 58, the northbound City of New Orleans, is scheduled to depart Centralia at 4:10am daily with service to Effingham, Mattoon, Champaign-Urbana, Kankakee, Homewood, and Chicago. Centralia is also served by Amtrak Train 390/391, the Saluki, daily in the morning, and Amtrak Train 392/393, the Illini, daily in the afternoon/evening. Both the Saluki and the Illini operate between Chicago and Carbondale.
Sports
The Centralia High School basketball team became known as the "Orphans" in 1936 because upstate sports reporters thought them shabby upstarts to be competing at the state level. However, the name became prophetic after the No. 5 mine disaster; at one time, all the players had lost a father in the mines. Also, the girls basketball team is called the "Annies"
There are some alternate theories as to why the sports teams of Centralia High School are called the "Orphans". One maintains that it was due to a large orphanage that at one time was present in the town, another widely accepted theory is that the players wore a bunch of unmatched jerseys when they went to state and a state reporter said that they look like a bunch of orphans out there.
Successes
Folks in town still remember the extraordinary success of the Orphans’ brightest star, Dwight “Dike” Eddleman, the team’s all-time leading scorer. During his high school years in the 1940s, he was the subject of a feature article in Life magazine. Later, he lettered in three sports at the University of Illinois, competed in the London Olympics (high jump) in 1948, and played in the NBA in the 1950s.
Today, the corner of the downtown Centralia Area Historical Society Museum devoted to local sports features a veritable shrine to Eddleman and his accomplishments. Others who rose up into the pros include Bobby Joe Mason, a Harlem Globetrotter for many years, and Dickie Garrett, who played briefly for the Los Angeles Lakers.
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