Sandy was a respected and honored athletic trainer for over four decades, serving at the professional, college and secondary school levels. Sandy was born in Huntsville, Alabama in 1901 and moved as a youth to Chattanooga, Tennessee, graduating from Chattanooga High School. In 1935 he became athletic trainer and traveling secretary for the Chattanooga Lookouts baseball club and remained in this capacity until the team left town in 1965.
In 1938 he also became the athletic trainer at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, succeeding Mickey O’Brien. When both UTC and the Lookouts temporarily ceased their operation during World War II Sandy became the head athletic trainer at Georgia Tech. At the war’s end he returned to his beloved Chattanooga and resumed both training positions.
In 1935 Sandy married Eleanor Rike, the secretary of the Lookouts owner.
Sandy retired as athletic trainer of the UTC Moccasins in 1974.His friends were apprehensive: Sandy just wasn’t meant to retire. To his joy he was quickly asked to become the athletic trainer at Baylor High School in Chattanooga. He spent five busy years there.
He died suddenly in the summer of 1979. At his memorial service his pastor said of Sandy, “He never turned away, even when he was tired . . . Sandy had a deep sense for what values are important, which are eternal, temporary, or transient. He was a man of deep faith, His faith was real and alive.”
All who knew Sandy Sandlin remember him fondly. Past District Nine Director, Doug May, himself the UTC athletic trainer for five years, said of this wonderful man, “Sandy had one trait that is spoken of by all that the healing magic of this man. It was that he truly cared about you and wanted to see you well and playing again. His time was not important; you were. He was the true athletic trainer in that he healed with his hands and his heart.”
In 1973 Sandy was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame, at a time few non-athletes were chosen. He received the NATA 25 Year Award in 1974 and was inducted posthumously into the NATA Hall of Fame in1987. In 1994, Sandy was inducted into the Tennessee Athletic Trainers’ Society Hall of Fame which further honored him with the establishment of the annual Sandy Sandlin High School Athletic Trainer of the Year Award.