Varsity Club Hall of Fame
Mark Salisbury, of Hallowell, Maine, by way of Cheshire, Conn., has been elected to the Northeastern University Varsity Club Hall of Fame for excellence in the sport of football. Salisbury, Class of 1995, will be inducted along with four others in formal ceremonies at Northeastern’s Matthews Arena in Boston, Mass., on Friday, April 13, 2012, at 7 p.m.
A three-time All-New England first team honoree, Salisbury left Northeastern with the fourth-most interceptions in program history, and also spent his springs at Parsons Field as a three-year letterman with the baseball team.
Born in Hallowell, Maine, Salisbury moved to Cheshire in eighth grade and quickly established himself as a three-sport star at Cheshire High School. A four-year letterman on both the hockey and baseball teams, Northeastern’s future star at strong safety played just two years of high school football, thinking his future was on the baseball diamond. In 1988, Salisbury was all-league and all-state in hockey, baseball and football, and though he repeated the feat in hockey and baseball in ’89, he did not take to the gridiron as a senior. “I didn’t think I was good enough to play [college football], and I wanted to play baseball,” he told the Record-Journal in 1993. “It’s an interesting road that I’ve taken…but I have no regrets.”
Northeastern football coach Paul Pawlak respectfully disagreed with Salisbury’s self-evaluation, and with the promise that he could play both baseball and football, Salisbury soon set about etching his name into the Northeastern record books. Originally recruited as a quarterback in Pawlak’s wishbone offense, Salisbury seamlessly transitioned to safety and led the defensive backfield with 57 tackles as a freshman, good for third on the team.
As a sophomore in 1991, the kid who didn’t think he was good enough to play began raking in the accolades. Now a fulltime defensive back, Salisbury grabbed a team-high six interceptions and blocked a kick, on his way to earning the first of his three successive All-New England recognitions.
New England coaches voted him all-region once again in 1992, and as a senior captain in 1993, Salisbury cemented his legacy as one of Northeastern’s finest defenders. He sealed the victory in the Huskies’ debut game in the Yankee Conference, a 27-3 blowout of Villanova, returning an interception 19 yards for a touchdown. Salisbury led the team with five interceptions and was second with 53 solo tackles that year, and was named All-New England, All-Yankee Conference Second Team, Northeastern’s team MVP, and a Sporting News Honorable Mention All-American.
After a sterling career on the gridiron, Salisbury has gone on to similar success as an animator and director. He won a 2002 Peabody Award for his work on “Little Bill,” which ran on Nickelodeon from 1999 to 2004 and won a Daytime Emmy following its final season. Since 2000, Salisbury has run Peach Nova Productions, as its owner and creative director.
Salisbury and his wife, Kristen, live in Carmel, N.Y., with their three children, Jack, River and Riley.
