BIO

Robert “Bob” DeFulgentiis was to the unbeatable Red Raider track & field teams of the late 1960s what Bill Russell was to the Boston Celtics — a pivotal, critical cog in a machine that seemed incapable of turning in anything less than a superlative effort.

In fact, for four seasons in spring track & field, with DeFulgentiis turning in school record after school record — three of which still stand to this very day — the Red Raiders lost just once and it was the first meet that the young speed demon ever participated in in his freshman year. Thereafter, and unti lthe day he flipped the tassle on his mortarboard, DeFulgentiis and Hal Cornforth’s Red & White cinder squad did not lose and captured 31 consecutive dual and tri-meet victories.

Nicknamed “The Raider Rocket,” by the local press, DeFulgentiis was an essential component in the Red & White’s first-ever victory at the vaunted Dennis-Yarmouth Invitational in 1969, just as he was in Barnstable’s fabulous showing at the State Class relays in Boston when he turned in perhaps the most remarkable performance of his career (at the Old Boston Garden).

While records come and go at Barnstable High School, and while cobwebs sometimes overshadow the feats of yesteryear with the passage of time, with his induction to the BHS Athletic Hall of Fame, no person can every deny that DeFulgentiis belongs at the very peak of the greatest who ever donned the Red & White. He was inducted into the BHS Hall of Fame in 2008.