“Joe Bird” or “Friendly Joe” to the Vanderbilt student-athletes and club and intramural students he trained and mentored, Joe Worden served generations of Commodores. Spanning half of the university’s history, his legacy continues to influence Vanderbilt Athletics to this day.
A World War II veteran who served in Guam and the Marshall Islands, Worden arrived at Vanderbilt in 1949 as head athletic trainer. Within a year, The Vanderbilt Hustler was already singling him out for praise for his role in the men’s basketball team’s surprising success that season. For the next 37 years, and well beyond as a volunteer in retirement, he was an influential presence on the football and basketball sidelines and a beloved campus figure who directed the university’s intramural and club sports for many years.
The athletic training room in Memorial Gymnasium bears his name, and two highly regarded awards have been named in his honor. The Joe Worden Tennessee Athletic Trainers’ Society Clinical/Industrial Athletic Trainer Award is presented annually to an athletic trainer in the state. The Joe L. Worden Courage Award is presented by the Middle Tennessee Chapter of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame at their annual banquet.
Fellow Hall of Fame inductee Lindsy McLean, one of his students and protégés, made a bequest to support the training room and the Athletic Training Room Hall of Fame Scholarship. McLean found his calling while sitting in on one of Worden’s classes while still a high school student.
“I used the notes from that class to teach similar courses for the next two decades,” McLean said. “I was hooked on athletic training, and due to Joe’s influence and friendship I decided to enroll at Vanderbilt upon graduation from high school and work as a student apprenticing under him. We never had more than one additional student assisting Joe other than myself during my four years there, so I got to do and observe everything.
“Joe was respected as a professional by the football players in the quiet way he ran the training room. He was always clam, relaxed, but ready for any unexpected injuries on the field.”
In 1984, Worden was inducted into the National Athletic Trainers’ Association Hall of Fame. And in 2004, he was posthumously inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame.
