1885 - 1960
Frank Wandle was athletic trainer at Army, Louisiana State University and Yale, where “The Major” revolutionized conditioning and wrote a rules book for the football team. Among Wandle's advice: “Of course there will be days of sunshine and days of darkness. Think of the bright side of life. Tomorrow the sun will be shining again.”
1894 - 1974
Stanley Wallace is remembered as the little man with the big grin who served the University of Maine at Orono for 38 years, from 1921-59. He was a professor of physical education and longtime head of the men's physical education division.
1887 - 1943
Claude “Big Monk” Simons, head athletic trainer at Tulane University from 1921 until his death in 1943, has gone down in history as one of the great names in intercollegiate athletics. Simons was head coach for basketball, baseball, track and boxing at Tulane and president of the Southern Amateur Athletic Union.
1889-1971
Michael Ryan, a distance runner on two U.S. Olympic teams and three times an Olympic coach, won virtually every major long distance race in the world from 1910-12, setting a time of 2:21:18 in the Boston Marathon (a record that stood for nearly a decade). In 1934 Ryan became track coach and athletic trainer at the University of Idaho; he later worked at Wyoming and was co-coach of the 1962 American men's track team.
1890 - 1960
Erastus Pennock joined the Springfield College faculty in 1925 and quickly established a reputation as an excellent wrestling coach and athletic trainer who pioneered athletic training education. During his 33 years at Springfield, Pennock gained widespread recognition for making the school's physical education department one of the best in the nation.
1902 - 1963
Herb Patchin, who studied with Matt Bullock at the University of Illinois, became the head athletic trainer at Virginia Military Institute in 1929, remaining at VMI the rest of his life. In addition to being a member of VMI's Sports Hall of Fame by special citation, the baseball field bears Patchin's name.
1882 - 1954
Einar Nielsen sailed to the U.S. from Norway in 1904 at age 22. Signing on as an athletic trainer for Utah in 1914, Nielsen is remembered as a man of quick wit, total dedication and impeccable skills. He is credited with launching athletic scholarship efforts on campus, and a fieldhouse bears his name as a reminder of his legacy.
1890 - 1970
When he was 16 years old, George “Doc” Nelson worked as a cabin boy on a ship bound from Sweden to the U.S. He gave up life at sea and landed at Utah State University in 1921 to become the first athletic trainer in the school's history. Nelson, a top wrestler in his prime, also coached Utah State grapplers to 10 Rocky Mountain Conference championships before retiring in 1958.
1861 - 1913
Michael C. Murphy is generally acknowledged as the first athletic trainer in the nation, caring for Olympians in 1900, 1908 and 1912. Murphy also is credited with developing many track champions at Yale and Pennsylvania universities. Of his 21 track teams, Murphy's men won 15 intercollegiate championships.
1883 - 1956
Larnard “Lon” Mann served for 24 years as athletic trainer for Purdue, joining the Boilermakers after gaining athletic training experience with Chicago Major League Baseball clubs and Penn State University. Mann helped develop facemasks, knee braces and taping techniques.