The Cambridge Athletic Hall of Fame announced its 2026 class of honorees, set to be inducted this November. The inductees are nominated by the public and voted on by The Cambridge Athletic Hall of Fame Committee, a nonprofit organization. 

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Maryann Cappello, the committee chair and a former Director of Athletics at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS), helped revive the Hall of Fame in 2012, after the last induction had been in 1981. The committee also offers scholarships to graduating senior athletes. 

Tom Arria, the Director of Athletics at CRLS and a member of the committee, said nominees must have attended and graduated from CRLS and had an athletic career there, that they be least five years out from the graduation, and they “have some type of exceptional experience as an athlete.” For coach nominations, the only requirement is a minimum number of years working at CRLS. Other inductee categories include team, legacy and legacy team. 

“We’re trying to get the best of the best to be in the Hall of Fame,” Cappello said.

The inductees 

Paul Riley graduated from Cambridge Latin in 1965, and he grew up in the housing projects in Cambridge, at a time when “sports were not as organized as they are now,” he said. He remembers playing baseball and basketball with other children from his neighborhood. “We would travel to different fields throughout Cambridge, St. Peter’s and Russell Field and Hoyt Field. And we would play amongst other kids from the neighborhoods,” he said.

“I slowly realized that when I went into high school at 4’ 11”, 104 pounds, I wasn’t going to be much of a basketball player,” Riley said. “So I decided to put my efforts into baseball and hockey.”

During his time as a student, he spent three years on the varsity baseball and varsity hockey teams, and was captain of both. He coached local Cambridge teams after he graduated. Riley was nominated by Bill Traynor, an old classmate and teammate of his. 

Thomas Murphy, who graduated two years after Riley in 1967, is being posthumously honored as a Coach Inductee. He was the captain of the baseball and hockey teams during his senior year at CRLS, and was named the best athlete by the City of Cambridge one year. “His senior season in hockey, most of his career, he played the whole game, the entire game [and] never came off the ice,” Murphy’s son, Brian Murphy said. “That’s unheard of now.”

Murphy taught physical education at the Tobin Montessori School and the Kennedy-Longfellow School, and coached local softball, football, and hockey teams, according to Brian Murphy. 

Brian Murphy explained that when Murphy was “sick towards the end,” many former students and friends from Cambridge came to visit him. 

“I think my dad would be happy,” Brian Murphy said of the induction, because it will be a chance for Murphy’s old friends, teammates, and colleagues to come together. “He was a humble guy.”

Before she graduated from CRLS in 2016, Yuleska Ramirez-Tejeda was a three-season varsity athlete on the volleyball, basketball, and softball teams. Ramirez-Tejeda knew in high school that she wanted to play basketball in college, and was supported by members of the CRLS athletics community through that process. 

Ramirez-Tejeda played Division I basketball at Purdue Fort Wayne for one year, and then transferred to and played at Emmanuel College. At Emmanuel, she also played softball. Most recently, Ramirez-Tejeda played professional basketball for Badel 1862 in North Macedonia and San Lazaro in Dominican Republic. She is currently recovering from an injury. 

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Rawhl Adams, a graduate of CRLS himself, is being honored as a Distinguished Contributor.

“He’s been somebody who’s totally invested in the athletics program at Cambridge Rindge and Latin,” Arria said of Adams. “He ensures the safety and wellbeing of all of our student athletes and teams as they compete,” he added.

Adams was an athletic coach for several years and then became the site manager for all games. 

“He knows [the students] well, they know him well,” Arria said. “He essentially lives, breathes and eats Cambridge athletics.”

The celebration

Cappello is looking forward to the celebration in November. “It’s always a very, very exciting night because you have people … [who] haven’t seen one another for a long, long time. So it’s a reunion for them,” she said.

Ramirez-Tejeda is looking forward to seeing “a lot of people that saw me grow up that I’m still in contact with” at the induction ceremony. “I wouldn’t have made it this far without any of them.”

 “I love saying that I grew up in Cambridge and that’s where I’m from,” said Nelson Ubaldo, a 1992 graduate of CRLS and an athletic honoree for baseball.

Ramirez-Tejeda described Cambridge athletics as “being a part of a family, essentially. That’s how Cambridge rolls, you know. Once you’re a Falcon, you’ll always be a Falcon.”

Here is the full list of inductees:

Athletes: 

Reginald Mark DeCambre ’75
Phil Levine (posthumously) ’70
Kevin Lovaincy ’12
Maisha Moses, Class ’87
Omo Moses, Class ’90
Ramon Neves, Class ’89
Yuleska Ramirez-Tejeda ’16
Paul Riley ’65
Michelle Thibault Silva ’79
Nelson Ubaldo ’92
Kyara Weekes ’07

Coach:

Thomas Murphy (posthumously)

Distinguished Contributor:

Rawhl Adams

Team:

1980 & 1981 CRLS Boys’ Basketball Teams

Legacy:

John Clarkson (posthumously), Class of 1894
William Conway ’58
Ann Marie Rancatore (posthumously) ’53
Mark Saia (posthumously) ’54

Legacy Teams:

1887 Cambridge High School Football Team
1940 Rindge Technical Track Team
1941 & 1942 Rindge Technical Boys’s Basketball Teams

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