Seven individuals and one team will be inducted in April 24 Gillette Stadium ceremony
The 1985-86 Women’s Swimming & Diving team, who will be inducted into the Tufts Athletics Hall of Fame for 2026.
Seven outstanding individuals and one memorable team will be inducted as the seventh class of the Tufts University Athletics Hall of Fame in April 2026.
The group of honorees represents five decades and eight sports, as Tufts continues to recognize accomplished individuals and teams from its more than 150 years of athletics history.
This seventh class will be inducted at the Tufts Athletics Hall of Fame induction dinner on April 24 at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Ticket information will be released in the coming weeks.
Meet the 2026 Tufts Athletics Hall of Fame inductees:
Chance Brady, A17
Football
Chance Brady rewrote the record book and changed the trajectory of the team during his four years playing football for the Jumbos. When Brady arrived at Tufts, the team was mired in a long losing streak. By the end of his career, the team had finished with a 7-1 record in his senior season, which was its best since 1998.
Brady set or tied 13 team rushing and scoring records. His 1,099 rushing yards in 2016 and 2,692 career total are both Jumbo all-time marks. His 19 touchdowns in 2016 and 35 for his career are also Tufts standards. Brady’s 210 career points scored broke the record of Fred “Fish” Ellis, after whom Tufts’ stadium is named.
In his final game, Brady had 285 total yards (rushing and receiving) and scored five touchdowns in a 48-35 win at Middlebury College. A two-time NESCAC Player of the Year, he earned New England Football Writers and Gridiron Club Player of the Year awards as a senior.
Mark Buben, A79
Football
After a dominant career on the defensive line at Tufts, the late Mark Buben was signed as a free agent by the New England Patriots of the National Football League.
One of just two Jumbos to play in the NFL during the modern era, Buben appeared in 35 games during three seasons in the NFL with the Patriots (1979, 1981) and the Cleveland Browns (1982). In 1981 he had an interception that he returned 49 yards to help set up a touchdown in a 33-17 Patriots victory over the Chiefs.
At Tufts he was a ferocious defender who intimidated opposing quarterbacks. His 31 career sacks still stand as the most in team history. The 12 sacks he recorded in both 1977 and 1978 remain tied for the most in a single season at Tufts. Buben’s dominant defensive play as the team won the final four games of 1978 helped set the tone for the Jumbos’ subsequent 1979 undefeated season.
Jo Clair, A14
Softball
A leader of two national championship softball teams at Tufts, Jo Clair graduated in 2014 as one of the most prolific hitters in NCAA Division III history. A four-year starter at catcher, Clair was part of the battery with Tufts Hall of Fame pitcher Allyson Fournier that led the Jumbos to NCAA titles in 2013 and 2014. She also helped head coach Cheryl Milligan’s team win three straight NESCAC Championships from 2012-14.
Clair’s 67 career home runs are third-most in NCAA history, and her 220 runs batted in are eighth-most all-time. The 24 home runs she hit in 2014 led the nation and are tied for the second-most in a single-season ever.
Her 156 total bases that year are fourth-best for one season in NCAA history. Clair’s 498 career total bases is another NCAA all-time top-10 mark. A three-time NFCA All-American and a four-time NESCAC All-Conference honoree, including Player of the Year in 2014, Clair was also an Academic All-American as a senior.
Fred Hintlian, A76
Men’s Track & Field
Tufts’ first-ever NCAA national champion in any sport, Fred Hintlian was one of the great hurdlers of his era in track & field. At the second-ever NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Berea, Ohio, Hintlian won the 440-yard hurdles title with a time of 52.15 seconds in 1975.
Due to the NCAA switching to metric measurements for race distances in 1976, Hintlian’s 52.15 mark stands in perpetuity as the Division III record for the 440-yard hurdles event. He was also the runner-up in the NCAA 400-meter hurdles in 1976, and had been third for the 440-yard race at the 1974 Nationals, making him a three-time All-American.
During his career at Tufts, Hintlian won four Eastern Intercollegiate titles in the hurdles and was the New England champion in 1974. A five-time team MVP (indoors and outdoors), Hintlian received Tufts’ Bennett Memorial Scholarship and Frederick Melvin Ellis Prize during his career for academic and athletic excellence.
Dennis Mink, A75
Men’s Basketball
A 6’7” forward, Dennis Mink was a force in the frontcourt for the successful Tufts men’s basketball teams of the early 1970s. Despite playing just three seasons, Mink graduated in 1975 as the Jumbos’ all-time leading scorer with 1,447 points (currently seventh all-time).
He is one of just two players in Tufts history to average better than 20 points per game for his career. As a senior in 1974-75, Mink scored 23.4 points per game, including a 40-point game. He was also #2 on the team’s career rebounds list upon graduation with 839 (still fifth).
Ineligible to play on the varsity team as a freshman due to NCAA rules, Mink was a sophomore on the 1972-73 Tufts team that won 22 games, captured the ECAC New England championship, and was inducted into the Tufts Athletics Hall of Fame in 2023. He averaged 12.4 rebounds that year, the third-best mark in team history. Mink’s 640 career field goals made in three seasons remain fifth all-time at Tufts.
Jessica Stewart, A02
Women’s Volleyball
The Jumbo Volleyball program’s first Tufts Athletics Hall of Fame inductee, Jessica Stewart took the Jumbos to another level with her play during her career from 1998 to 2001. An all-around player, at the time of her graduation Stewart was first on the Tufts career lists for kills (1665) and service aces (214), while also ranking fifth all-time in digs (1390) and ninth in blocks (207).
She posted two of the top three single-season kills marks, including a program-best 452 kills in 1999. At the time, she was the only Jumbo ever to record 30 kills in one match, doing it twice, including 31 versus Brandeis in 2001.
She also had two of the top three Tufts single-season service aces totals, led by the 73 aces she served in 2001. The NESCAC Rookie of the Year in 1998 and then a two-time All-Conference selection (2000 and 2001), Stewart helped lay the groundwork for a Tufts program that would blossom in the 2000s.
Jessica Trombly, A04
Women’s Soccer / Women’s Track & Field
One of the great multi-sport athletes in Tufts history, Jessica Trombly was a leading scorer for the soccer team and a national champion hurdler in track & field.
In her first semester at Tufts, Trombly was an offensive leader on the 2000 women’s soccer team that made a dramatic run to the NCAA championship game. She was NESCAC’s Rookie of the Year that season, a three-time All-Conference honoree overall and finished her soccer career fourth on the team’s all-time scoring list with 58 points (22 goals, 14 assists).
On the track, she won the 2004 NCAA Outdoor 400-meter hurdles title with a time of 59.98 seconds. Equally impressive, Trombly won five events—200m, 400m, 55-meter hurdles, long jump, 4x400 relay—at the New England Division III Indoor Track and Field championships in 2003.
A four-time All-American overall, Trombly still holds Tufts records in the 400 meters indoors and the heptathlon outdoors. She received Tufts’ Hester L. Sargent Award as Best Female Athlete in back-to-back years (2003 and 2004).
1985-86 Women’s Swimming & Diving Team
The 1985-86 Women’s Swimming & Diving team, who will be inducted into the Tufts Athletics Hall of Fame for 2026.
Formed in 1974, the Tufts women’s swimming & diving team quickly became one of the best in New England. The program’s early success peaked when head coach Nancy Bigelow’s 1985-86 team won the New England championship and then placed 10th at the NCAA championships.
With an experienced group of swimmers and divers who had helped the team earn back-to-back undefeated seasons in 1983-84 and 1984-85, the Tufts team then captured the program’s first-ever New England championship in 1985-86.
The Jumbos defeated rival Williams College for the first time to win the New Englands, with six individuals and three relays winning titles. The team’s top-10 NCAA finish was significant because the AIAW national organization had recently disbanded and the NCAA Division III championship meet remained as the only national competition attended by Division III teams.
Eight Jumbos earned All-American honors in 10 events at the national championship. All-Americans Kelly Brown, Jane Donahue, Ann Erickson, Laurie Frankel, Ceci Grimm, Beth Harris, Ann McCann, Amy Moran, and Wendy Stedman led the team.
Brown & Blue Award
Included in the bylaws for the Tufts Athletics Hall of Fame is a provision that permits the Selection Committee to present an award designed to recognize alumni, donors, benefactors, staff, friends, and supporters who have made significant contributions to the success of Tufts Athletics over the years.
The name of this very special award is The Brown & Blue Award. This year’s recipient is Mike Skeldon. The outstanding progress that Tufts University has made in improving its athletics facilities over the past 15 years is largely due to the significant contributions of Skeldon.
As senior project manager of major construction projects for Tufts, he oversaw the construction of the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center, which opened in 2012 as the sparkling new home of Tufts Athletics.
He also helped develop the Athletics Master Facilities Plan, worked on the Tufts Squash Center, which opened in 2020, was part of early iterations of what would become Sol Gittleman Park for baseball, and was involved in the first round of Aquatics Center work with a prospective design/build team.
Skeldon was a natural problem-solver who could creatively figure out ways to get things done in an economically common-sense way. He passed away in 2019, but left a legacy of work that invaluably supported Tufts’ varsity, club sport, and intramural/recreation programs. He also trained with the Tufts Marathon Team, under legendary coach Don Megerle, and finished the historic Boston Marathon in 2018.
