Titus received award before Boston Red Sox game
Vice Chancellor for Athletics and Recreation, Special Projects and Programs Charlie Titus was inducted into the 2019 Bay State Games Hall of Fame earlier this week during a pre-game ceremony at Fenway Park, before the Red Sox took on the Chicago White Sox. He was inducted alongside Orlando Vandross, Yvonne Chern, and Beth Spoka.
Titus has been on the board of directors for the 38-year-old Bay State Games for more than 25 years. Perhaps even more significant to the success of the Bay State Games, he has enabled events to take place at UMass Boston facilities since the mid 1980s.
A Roxbury native, Titus played basketball at Boston Technical High School and at Saint Michael’s College, where he was inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame in 1999. He is also a member of the Little East Conference Hall of Fame and the New England Basketball Hall of Fame.
Titus served as the first head coach of UMass Boston’s men’s basketball team, and coached for 39 years until he retired from that position in 2015, continuing on as vice chancellor. His accolades are numerous: Last year he received the Larry Smith Award, presented annually to a former Small College Basketball player who has used the game of basketball to impact the lives of others and change the world for good. In 2015, he was one of four Division III coaches to receive the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics’s Under Armour AD of the Year Award, and he was the first coach in LEC history to receive The National Association of Basketball Coaches’ Guardians of the Game Leadership Award. The award is given to the NABC coach who provides moral and ethical leadership on issues affecting the game of basketball and society.
The Bay State Games are Massachusetts’ own Olympic-style sports festival for athletes of all ages and abilities. The programs attract more than 7,000 athletes from the state of Massachusetts, who compete in over 30 different summer and winter sports. The Bay State Games Hall of Fame was created to recognize past participants who have gone on to prestigious and successful athletic careers, as well as former and current coaches, officials, sports organizers, and volunteers who have made significant contributions to the organization throughout its history. Past inductees include the late Reggie Lewis (`02), the WNBA’s Rebecca Lobo (’03), and Olympian Nancy Kerrigan (`07).