This is the 8th in a series profiling this year's inductees for the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame and Wall of Honor, which will be posted every week at baylorbears.com.
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
Nearly 40 years down the road, Sandy Forsythe Massey thought her time to get into the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame had come and gone.
"There had been some really good runners that came after me that had gotten in, so I thought my time had passed," she said. "When I came in for Coach (Clyde) Hart's retirement, we talked about a lot of things about getting into the Hall of Fame, but he didn't really say, for sure. And then when COVID hit, I thought, 'Well, is it just because of COVID, or am I not going to get in after all?' I didn't really know."
When Baylor Associate AD Walter Abercrombie from the "B" Association called her this summer to share the news that she indeed had been elected, Sandy said, "My heart just leaped."
"I can't tell you how thrilled I was," said Massey, the first Baylor female athlete to receive a full scholarship in track & field when she enrolled in 1981. "He just said, 'Congratulations. We want you to be in the Hall of Fame at Baylor University.' I don't even know how to express how I feel about it. It's one of the best things that's ever happened to me in my life besides my salvation and my two boys."
Massey is part of the 2023 class that will be enshrined on Nov. 3 at the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame banquet in the Cashion Building Banquet Room.
Always more of a basketball and softball player growing up in Memphis, Tenn., Sandy started running just for something to do at school while her brother went through football practice at Sky View Baptist Academy.
"I was just running to get ready for basketball," she said. "But one day, this coach said, 'Hey, I see you run a lot. You want to run in this cross country race?' I just stayed toward the middle (of the race), and I had something left at the end, so I actually won it. But I still continued with my other sports."
As a junior, Sandy won the Tennessee state cross country championship in the final year that it included all divisions of public and private schools.
"I wasn't real familiar with cross country, but my coach (William Inman) was a really good coach that gave his life as a track coach. And he was the one that trained me," said Massey, who also finished fourth at the National Kinney Cross Country Championships. "There's a school in Nashville called Harpeth Hall that had really good runners. And I think that was the first time anyone had beaten them. I won it, and I think they got second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth. So, that's when I really got serious about track and cross country."
That was also when the recruiting attention started picking up. She had more than 30 Division I scholarship offers, including the top two programs in the country at the time in Tennessee and Florida State. Massey chose Baylor, a school that had not given any track scholarships to women at the time, but her future husband, Phil Massey, had signed a football scholarship to play for legendary Baylor coach Grant Teaff.
"I went down to visit, and I just loved the community at Baylor," she said. "And Coach Hart decided to start a program since I was interested and I was heavily recruited. So, I became the first scholarship athlete the year they were switching to NCAA (from AIAW). It was pretty tough at first, because I didn't really have anybody to train with. I just started doing my intervals and training with the walk-on guys, so it all worked out."
Sandy said she didn't really think of herself as any kind of a trailblazer until she spoke to the Baylor women's cross country team before the 1990 NCAA Championships in Knoxville, Tenn.
"I drove over to Knoxville and spoke to them before the race, and they were really nice," she said. "They said, 'Oh my goodness, we hear so many stories about you from (coach) Steve Gulley. He said you're the hardest worker that he's ever coached.' That was when I thought, 'Wow, I wish I had had more girls to train with.' But from what they were saying, I guess maybe I did leave a mark there."
Although injuries limited her impact in cross country, Massey had a year to remember as a fifth-year senior in 1986. Named Baylor's Outstanding Female Athlete that year, she set school records in the 1,500 (4:16.82), 3,000 (9:22.44) and 5,000 meters (16:15.50) and qualified for the NCAA Championships in all three events.
"I qualified in the 5,000 first, which I was really shocked," she said. "I'm sure it's broken now, but I broke the Paper Tiger Relays record that night at LSU. About two weeks later, I was named the Southwest Conference Athlete of the Week because I qualified in the 1,500 and 3,000 at the Texas Invitational in Austin. That was a big deal to qualify for NCAAs at one meet in two distance races."
Thirty-seven years later, Sandy still holds the school record in the 3,000 meters and ranks as one of the top-10 performers in the 5,000.
But her lasting memory about Baylor was the community aspect, that "it's like family." She had a pair of host parents in Charlie and Sarah Jones and Barton and Claudia Rhea for her five years in Waco.
"Kevin and Alan (Rhea) were like little brothers to us, my husband and I," she said. "I just thought it was really neat, the community at Baylor and how they welcomed people, especially people from out of state. I think they were supposed to be more Phil's host parents, but I just jumped in there and got close to them."
Getting her degree in education from Baylor, Sandy was a coach and teacher at several high schools in Tennessee until she was diagnosed with leukemia in December 2009.
"I did chemo 24 hours a day for seven days when they found it," she said, "because I went straight into ICU. When they tested me again, I still had it after a week. And then, they said we're going to have to hit you hard again and you're probably not going to make it through this week. The doctors were pretty blunt. They told me I should say my goodbyes."
Surviving that second round of chemo, Sandy got on a list for a donor and had a bone marrow transplant on May 21, 2010.
"It was scary, because I had to take what they called maintenance chemo to keep it at bay, even though I didn't have it anymore," she said. "If I had relapsed between, I wouldn't have been strong enough to handle the transplant because they knock you down to zero white blood cells. The doctors at Vanderbilt said the training I did probably saved my life, because I really got down to nothing."
While getting back into private coaching, Sandy also started training again and completed the 550-mile Camino de Santiago, taking 28 days to walk coast to coast across Spain "all by myself."
"I wanted to feel like I was still in shape," she said. "It was a spiritual journey and one of my biggest accomplishments, but not bigger than getting in the Hall of Fame at Baylor University."
Sandy and Phil, a highly successful high school coach in Tennessee, are back in Memphis and have two sons, Tyler (34) and Houston (31). Tyler was a 14
th-round draft pick and played nine years in the Colorado Rockies organization.
"People tease me about both the boys being named after Texas cities," Sandy said. "But Houston is a family name and Tyler is actually his middle name. I just liked that name. But I did love Texas. I wanted to stay and my husband wanted to come back to Tennessee. They're both great states, but always thought I would stay there."
Joining Massey in the 2023 Hall of Fame class are fellow track and field athletes Stan Curry and Tiffany Townsend, football players J.D. Walton and Ken Quesenberry, baseball's Max Muncy, longtime men's basketball radio and TV analyst Pat Nunley and men's tennis All-American Denes Lukacs.
"I can't tell you how excited and how honored I am to go into the Hall of Fame, and with such a great class," she said. "I don't know how I'm in with that group of people. They're just amazing."
Additionally, former men's tennis player George Chandler will be added to the Wall of Honor after almost 60 years as a personal-injury trial lawyer.
