PORTLAND – Former Bates College football coach and athletic director Robert Hatch headlines the new Class of 2004 for the Maine Sports Hall of Fame.

The hall will honor six new members at its induction ceremony Sunday at the Italian Heritage Center in Portland beginning at 6 p.m.

Joining Hatch in the Class of 2004 are Dick McCabe, Morton Soule, Brad Leach, Richard Daniels and Arnold Green.

After serving with the marines in the Pacific during WWII, Hatch enrolled at Boston University and played football, baseball, tennis and golf. He was captain of the BU football team in 1948 and started in the North-South Shrine game.

Drafted by the New York Giants, Hatch turned them down to accept a job at Bates, where he served as head football coach from 1952 to 1972. Promoted to athletic director in 1974, Hatch led the department until his retirement in 1990.

McCabe is the first race car driver named to the Maine hall. McCabe, the second Maine driver to win the Oxford 250, topped the money list at Oxford Plains Speedway from 1974 through 1993. He also captured the Busch North series championship in 1992 and 1993. Retired for the last 10 years, McCabe flirted with the idea of returning to the driver’s seat, but recently decided against competing in this weekend’s DNK Select 250 at Unity.

Soule, who starred at both Deering and Bowdoin College, was an all-conference baseball standout who won the batting title in 1963 with a .436 average. He was a member of the 1962 relay team that still holds the indoor track record. Soule was also co-captain of the Bowdoin football team in 1967.

Leach, a longtime coach and administrator at Thornton, led the Trojans to consecutive state football titles in the the mid 1950s. He really excelled on the diamond, where he was the MVP of the 1955 state tournament and pitched in the 1957 College World Series for UConn.

An all-state running back at South Portland, Daniels attended Wake Forest on a football scholarship, where he earned his way into the starting lineup in the 1950s.

Green was an All-American swimmer in high school and college. Now in his 70s, Green is still competing and has been ranked in the top 10 in several age group events.

The Maine hall will also honor Sun Journal sports writer Bob McPhee with a Special Achievement Award. A three-sport standout, McPhee had pinned the Australian national wrestling champion just weeks before a football injury during his senior year at Rumford High School left him a quadriplegic unable to speak.

McPhee has overcome his handicap to become an award-winning journalist. A Sun Journal staff writer since 1987, McPhee has won media awards from Wrestling USA magazine, the Maine Field Hockey Association and the Maine Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association.