Ralph Budelman played water polo for the Illinois Athletic Club, helping them win AAU national titles indoors in 1940-41, 1948-49, 1952, and 1955, and outdoors in 1951 and 1953. He played competitively for the Illinois AC from 1936-55, where he also served as President later in life. Budelman settled in Chicago, where he started the Ralph N. Budelman Company, an excavating business. He was on the Organizing Committee for the 1959 Pan American Games, was a director of the First National Bank of Hinsdale, and was a director of the Chicago Boys Club and the Hinsdale Golf Club. He was elected to the US Water Polo Hall of Fame in 1979.