Seven athletes, one team, a coach/administrator, and a longtime supporter are recognized for their accomplishments
The 2014 men’s soccer team celebrate their NCAA championship.
Eight outstanding individuals and one memorable team will be inducted as the sixth class of the Tufts University Athletics Hall of Fame this year. The group of honorees represents eight decades and eight sports, as Tufts continues to recognize accomplished individuals and teams from its more than 150 years of athletics history.
This sixth class will be inducted at the Tufts Athletics Hall of Fame Induction Dinner on June 6 at Gillette Stadium. Ticket information will be released in the coming weeks.
Meet the 2025 Tufts Athletics Hall of Fame Inductees:
Barrie Bruce, A63
Golf
In the early 1960s, Barrie Bruce was both the best individual golfer and led the best teams that Tufts University had ever seen in the sport up to that point. Many of his and the team’s accomplishments from that era still stand. In 1961 he was the medalist at the New England Intercollegiate Golf Association (NEIGA) championship, shooting 71 at the Metacomet Country Club in East Providence, Rhode Island.
That led Tufts to the New England Championship, and he would also lead the Jumbos to the Greater Boston League championship that year. Bruce then led Tufts to the New England title again in 1962, and those back-to-back championships stand as the only Tufts wins at the tournament in the 90-year history of the event.
He is the only Tufts player ever to win NEIGA Championship medalist honors. Bruce earned All-American accolades in both 1962 and 1963. After Tufts, he was the Massachusetts and New England amateur champion in 1967. His career as a golf teacher has also been widely recognized, including his selection to the Golf Magazine 100 Best Teachers list in 2005.
Scott Greenwood, A17
Soccer
Scott Greenwood was the starting goalkeeper and an emotional leader of the 2014 and 2016 Tufts men’s soccer teams that won NCAA Championships. In 2014 he was named the Most Outstanding Defensive Player of the NCAA Tournament. He made eight saves in the team’s 4-2 win over Wheaton College (Illinois) in the NCAA final for the Jumbos’ first-ever national title.
His 0.58 goals against average was the best in NESCAC that year. In 2016 he recorded five shutouts and a 0.16 goals against average during the NCAA Tournament, which included a 1-0 win against Calvin University in the final.
In 19 starts for the Jumbos during 2016, Greenwood’s .888 save percentage ranked third in the nation. He was named D3soccer.com’s Goalkeeper of the Year and a first team All-American that season. A four-year starter in his career as a Jumbo (2013-16), Greenwood is the Tufts record-holder for single-season shutouts (12) and career shutouts (32). In 2013 he allowed just eight goals all season, and he holds three of Tufts’ top four shutouts in a season marks.
Colleen Hart, E11
Basketball
Colleen Hart was one of head coach Carla Berube’s first major recruits in 2007 and helped lead the start of Tufts’ turnaround into one of the nation’s top programs. She helped the women’s basketball team win more than 20 games in each of her four seasons and play in three NCAA Tournaments.
She was a leader of the 2007-08 team that earned the team’s first-ever NCAA berth and made a run to the Elite Eight. That team’s 26-4 record was the best in Tufts history at the time. Hart was All-NESCAC for four straight years and was the NESCAC Rookie of the Year in 2008. She became the program’s all-time leading scorer with 1,422 points (a record that has since been broken).
She remains Tufts’ all-time leader in three-pointers with 231 and the single-season three-pointers leader with 83. Hart is also third on the team’s career assists list with 343. A two-year captain of the Jumbos, she played professionally in Switzerland. She would later serve as a Jumbo assistant coach, including in 2014 and 2015, when the team made back-to-back NCAA Final Four appearances.
Brooks Johnson, A56
Track & Field
Brooks Johnson was an All-American track athlete at Tufts who went on to a Hall of Fame coaching career in the sport. A sprinter, long jumper, and high jumper at Tufts, he was a team captain and leader of two straight Eastern Intercollegiate championship teams in 1955 and 1956.
During his Tufts career, Johnson tied the national intercollegiate 60-yard dash record of 6.2 seconds in 1955. After Tufts he would set the world record in the event (6.0) in 1960. Three years later, he earned a gold medal with the 400-meter relay team at the Pan American Games.
After beginning his coaching career at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., Johnson was appointed the first-ever black coach at Stanford University in 1979. He would become head coach of the U.S. Women’s Olympic Track & Field Team, and guided them to 15 medals (seven golds) at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. A brilliant student at Tufts who provoked insightful conversations on campus, Johnson was the first Tufts athlete to ever receive the Tufts Presidential Medal in 1984. He was inducted into the US Track & Field Coaches Hall of Fame in 1997.
Rachel “Polly” (Kimball) Knowlton, J45
Tennis
In some of the earliest days of women’s athletics at Jackson College, Rachel “Polly” (Kimball) Knowlton achieved national success in tennis that was unheard of at the time. Knowlton had achieved at a championship level before she even arrived on campus, and she would continue to excel at her sport for the rest of her life.
While she was at nearby Winchester High School, Knowlton was a Massachusetts state doubles champion in tennis. At Tufts, she was undefeated during her collegiate career and twice played in national intercollegiate tournaments.
In 1942 and 1943, Knowlton represented Jackson College for Women at the National Women’s Intercollegiate Tennis Championships. In 1942 she teamed with Geneva Underwood of Stephens College to reach the doubles semifinals. In 1943 she reached the singles quarterfinals and teamed with Connie Clifton of Rollins to reach the doubles final.
By today’s standards those results would make her a three-time All-American. Continuing on in the sport, at age 45 she ranked seventh nationally in doubles, and at 75 she ranked 12th nationally in senior doubles.
Melissa (Lowe) Edwards, J90
Field Hockey, Lacrosse
Coming to Tufts in 1986, Melissa Lowe (now Edwards) was an outstanding multi-sport athlete with success on the Tufts women’s lacrosse and field hockey teams.
A three-time All-American in lacrosse, she was the leading scorer of Tufts teams that won three consecutive ECAC New England titles, and had a 35-game winning streak during 1987-90. (Tufts teams were not eligible for NCAA play at the time.)
Her 57 goals during the 1989 season came in just 13 games, and she added 22 assists for 79 points to average more than six points per game. Three times in 1990 she scored seven goals in a game. Edwards graduated as the lacrosse program’s all-time leading scorer with 256 points, and also held the career and single-season goals records with 176 and 57, respectively (records since broken). Her 80 career assists are still third all-time.
Playing more of a defensive role in field hockey, she was a stalwart on four Jumbo teams, including the 1989 squad that won the ECAC New England title in her senior season. As a senior in 1990 she received Tufts’ Rudolph J. Fobert Award for her success in multiple sports and academic achievement.
Bob Patz, A87, M91, A24P
Football
Bob Patz was a major threat to opposing quarterbacks in his junior and senior seasons on the Jumbo football team. He had 12 sacks in eight games in both years, helping the Jumbos establish themselves as the best team in New England during that time. The 12 sacks are still tied for the most in a season in Tufts Football history.
His play on defense helped Tufts rise from a team that did not win a game in 1984 into a group that won a NESCAC title and finished as the #1 team in New England for 1986. In the game against Amherst College that year—which was dubbed “The Small College Game of the Year—Patz had six sacks in a 35-23 Jumbo victory. His six sacks that day stand as the Jumbos’ single-game record.
Patz finished 1986 with 83 total tackles and a remarkable 24 tackles for loss in eight games, earning him Kodak Coaches’ All-American honors and the NESCAC Defensive Player of the Year award. Patz was as diligent academically as he was ferocious on the field. He earned both a National Football Foundation Scholar-Athlete Award and NCAA Post-Graduate Scholarship in 1986.
Branwen Smith-King
Coach, Administrator 1982-2017
During 35 years with the Jumbos, Branwen Smith-King became one of the most influential women in Tufts Athletics history. A native of Bermuda, she was an Olympic-level athlete in her own right and brought her spirit of competition to Tufts when she was hired as women’s track & field and cross country coach in 1982.
She quickly established the Tufts program on a national level, and her student-athletes would win 13 national championships and earn more than 50 All-American honors. She recruited eight-time NCAA national champion Vera Stenhouse, J91, to Tufts. Several of her teams earned top-five finishes at NCAA championship meets, including a third place at the 1989 indoor championship.
Smith-King coached Tufts’ first-ever NCAA-qualifying women’s cross country team in 1999. As senior woman administrator for Athletics from 2000 to 2017, she continued to work tirelessly as an advocate for student-athletes. Among her achievements were promoting wellness to incoming freshmen, working closely with the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, and spearheading many DEIJ initiatives.
2014 Men’s Soccer Team
The 2014 Tufts men’s soccer team made an amazing run in the NCAA Tournament to win the program’s first national championship. After they were defeated in the NESCAC playoff quarterfinals, the Jumbos received an at-large berth into the NCAAs and won six straight games on the road to capture the title.
During their run, Tufts defeated three perennial DIII powerhouses (Messiah, Ohio Wesleyan, and Wheaton [Ill.]) that had a combined 97 NCAA Tournament appearances and 14 national championships between them. Most notable was a 1-0 win in the quarterfinals over Messiah College, which was the #1 team in the country and had won eight of the last 10 NCAA Championships.
The Tufts win ended a 39-game undefeated stretch by the Falcons. Head coach Josh Shapiro’s Jumbos also went undefeated (7-0-3) in the NESCAC regular season. With their 16-2-4 final record, the 2014 team’s victories that season were twice as many as the previous season and were the school record at the time.
Brown & Blue Award
Ed Schluntz, A50, AG51
An alumni leader and friend to Tufts Athletics for 70 years now, Ed Schluntz is the 2025 recipient of the Brown & Blue Award. The honor is designed to recognize alumni, donors, benefactors, staff, friends, and supporters who have made significant contributions to the success of Tufts Athletics over the years.
Already in the Hall of Fame as a member of the 1950 baseball team that was inducted in 2017, Schluntz also played football and basketball for the Jumbos. After graduating, he coached at Tufts to begin what would become a legendary career in athletics leadership.
During more than a half-century dedicated to the game, he was head football coach and director of athletics at Brookline High School in Massachusetts and coached the freshman team at Harvard University.
Among the many leadership roles he held in the sport, he served as president of the Football Coaches Association in the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. In that role he conceptualized and implemented the MIAA’s playoff system and formula for determining playoff teams.
Within his many roles and honors received, Schluntz was a distinguished representative of Tufts. He remained loyal to his alma mater as a charter member and eventual president of the Jumbo Club. He was one of the first Jumbo Club Award recipients in 1972. In his leadership roles with the National Football Foundation, he supported national award nominations for Tufts University alumni and was a highly respected representative of Tufts on a national level.
