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Coach gives 'everything' to his athletes

Meet Alumni Hall of Fame inductee Alan Collatz

By California State University, Bakersfield

December 11^th, 2019

Editor's note: This is the second of four 2020 Alumni Hall of Fame profiles.

A few months after retiring as CSUB’s head track and field coach, Alan Collatz got a call from his replacement asking him to come back.

Coach Marcia Mansur-Wentworth offered him an office, phone, computer and keys if he’d return as an assistant.

Collatz was firm in his reply.

“I don’t want an office. I don’t want a phone. I don’t want a computer,” he told her. “Just give me a key to the shed and a key to the track, and then I’ll come back.”

For Collatz, the best part of coaching is working with the athletes: teaching them, building relationships with them, helping them not only win but graduate.

He’s been coaching CSUB track and field for 32 years, ever since graduating from the university as a star javelin thrower.

His stats are astounding.

Collatz has produced 97 NCAA Division II All-Americans, 24 Division II national champions, and five Western Athletic Conference champions.

As an athlete, he holds the CSU record in the javelin and has qualified for two U.S. Olympic trials and five USA championships. He placed third at the 1985 NCAA Division II Championships, helping lead the `Runners to a fourth-place national showing, its second-best performance ever.

But ask former athletes about Collatz and they don’t talk about numbers. They talk about times he encouraged them, checked on their home lives, made sure they went to class and continued coaching them after they left CSUB.

“Al is just the nicest, most humble, kind-hearted individual. Sees the best in people. A transformational leader,” said former CSUB hurdler Brandon Washington. “He’s literally everything to me.”

Playing in the street

Collatz grew up in Santa Maria with his German-born parents and two older brothers. His mother, Viktoria, was a physician; his father, Gunther, a jack-of-all-trades businessman and commercial fisherman.

Collatz at about age 4 at his family’s vacation home in Shaw Island, Wash.

Collatz spent all of his free time outside playing sports.

“From sunup to sundown on days when there was no school, we played basketball in the street, football in the street, baseball in the street,” he said.

Collatz played football and baseball at Santa Maria High School, then shifted to track and specialized in running and high jump. His favorite sport was actually basketball, which he played in city leagues.

After graduation, Collatz stayed home to help care for his father, who had cancer, and enrolled at Allan Hancock Community College. He was the only high jumper on the team, and after a while it got old. So he tried something new -- javelin.

There was no throws coach at Hancock, so Collatz learned by doing. It wasn’t his smartest move; he constantly got hurt. During some stretches he’d have to get cortisone shots every Monday after a meet.

“It’s a brutal sport,” said Collatz, who has endured two elbow surgeries. “The arm wasn’t made, the body wasn’t made, to throw a javelin. It’s an awkward movement.”

Collatz throwing the javelin for Allan Hancock Community College in Santa Maria, where he was an All-American athlete.

But Collatz kept getting better and so stuck with it. He also enjoyed the training, a lot of weight-lifting and basketball playing. He left Hancock as an All-American.

CSUB Track & Field Coach Charlie Craig recruited Collatz after hearing about him from another Santa Maria High alum, Charles Truvillion. Craig watched Collatz compete at a state meet and liked the way he carried himself, and the fact he could jump, throw and run.

Collatz, who competed at CSUB from 1983 to 1985, did not disappoint.

“He was very serious, very focused,” Craig said. “Wherever he went, whether with a great coach or a terrible coach, he was going to be successful because he was so focused.”

Collatz admits he probably worked too hard, doing “crazy” weight-lifting during the day and drills in Patriots Park at night. He bulked up from 195 to 220 pounds in less than a year. It’s just that Division II competition was much tougher than he was used to, Collatz said, and he wanted to fit in.

“I remember training my butt off,” he said. “I thought I worked hard before, but it was nothing like what I did when I got here.”

Collatz throwing the hammer at CSUB, where he competed from 1983 to 1985.

In 1985 Collatz won a conference championship and placed third in the javelin at the NCAA Division II nationals, helping lead the `Runners to a fourth place national finish. He also set the CSU’s record in the javelin, which stood until the implement was reconfigured and records were reset.

He was a 1992 Olympic Trials qualifier who ranked in the top 10 in the javelin by Track and Field News in 1991 and 1994, and placed eighth at the USA Track and Field Championships in 1994.

But Collatz would make an even bigger mark coaching at CSUB.

A quiet leader

Craig hired Collatz as an assistant coach overseeing shot put, disc, hammer and javelin in 1987. He knew he’d be a great coach because of his quiet leadership as an athlete. When Collatz spoke up, whether to encourage or straighten out his teammates, people listened, Craig said.

This is Collatz during his tenure as assistant coach under head CSUB Track & Field Coach Charlie Craig, who had recruited him to compete for the school.

Collatz was Craig’s assistant for 15 years. How good was he? Craig pulled out a 2008 book of CSUB stats to add to those highlighted earlier in this story.

The 10 best-ever school performances in shot put and disc at CSUB were recorded by athletes Collatz coached, Craig said. Same goes for the seven or eight best-ever performances in hammer throw and javelin.

Collatz made a name for himself well outside Bakersfield, as former thrower Arnaldo Cueto found out when he was being recruited by CSUB, Fresno State and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the early 2000s.

“The Fresno State coach didn’t have anything nice to say about the Cal Poly coach and the Cal Poly coach didn’t have anything nice to say about the Fresno State coach,” Cueto said. “But when I told them Al was the other guy I was talking to, they both said, ‘Oh, Al’s a great coach.’”

What made him great? He’s genuine, honest, and has a unique ability to communicate what he wants from his athletes, said Cueto, who set CSUB’s hammer record and won two national throwing titles under Collatz.

He could explain how to get better, what to expect in competition and how to handle both the pressure and the success, Cueto said. Collatz personally paid for Cueto to compete in the USA Championships after his CSUB eligibility ended.

“When you look at Al you see this macho guy, this big guy with a mustache and a gravelly voice, and he looks kind of intimidating,” said Cueto, now a special education teacher at Highland High School. “But what a lot of people don’t see about Al is all the time he puts into his athletes.”

Collatz shares a private coach-athlete talk after the athlete became an All-American.

Shot put and hammer thrower Chris Figures remembered Collatz taking six athletes to Boston for a national indoor meet and going out of his way to make sure they were safe. The athletes had never been that far from home, he said.

“He treated us like we were his kids,” said Figures, a national champion, All-American and Olympic trials finalist under Collatz. “He would call in the morning to tell us to wake up and eat our breakfast, brush our teeth. He’d have a meeting before bed and make sure we’d go take a shower.”

When their van broke down in the snow, Collatz told his athletes funny stories to keep their minds off the cold, said Figures, a PE teacher at Chipman Junior High.

And for April Burton, who won multiple national titles as a hammer, discus, shot put and weight thrower at CSUB, Collatz was the rock she needed at the time.

When Burton got to CSUB, she was a single mother who didn’t really excel in school but loved sports. She admired how Collatz never missed practices with his athletes and kept notepads on each one with the weights they were lifting and goals they were setting.

“Amazing,” she said. “Who does that?”

Then Burton married, got pregnant again and had to red shirt. Collatz worked it out so she could. She returned to the team after having her baby and earned another national championship.

“He’s like that solid line of consistency for a lot of his athletes,” said Burton, a onetime foster kid. “There’s a lot of inconsistency in my background. A lot of letdowns. A lot of disappointments. He was the total opposite of what I was used to.”

'Loaded with talent'

Craig was so sure Collatz should be the next head track and field coach that he retired in January instead of June 2003 so Collatz would have several months as interim coach to prove himself worthy of the permanent position.

Collatz did prove himself worthy, and was head coach until 2012 when he retired. He left after finding himself spending 10 percent on coaching and 90 percent on administrative stuff he didn’t find as fulfilling.

April Burton, Collatz and Chris Figures pose in 2005 when Burton and Figures were named NCAA Division II Athletes of the Year.

It’s hard to pin Collatz down on his favorite teams or eras or memories as a coach. He agreed it’s like having to pick your favorite child.

“The 2004, 2005, 2006 era was just amazing. We were loaded with talent and great kids,” Collatz said. “There was the ‘94, ‘95 group. ‘91, ‘92. There’s so many.

“Then I have teams that may not have been as talented but there were great kids and we had some great times.”

Collatz had opportunities to leave CSUB but stayed, thinking he’d never have it as good elsewhere. And his family was firmly rooted in Bakersfield.

Good at pig tails

Maria Collatz first noticed her future husband at junior college track meets when she competed for Citrus College in Glendora.

“He was very good looking and a very good javelin thrower,” she remembered.

They ended up on the CSUB track team together when Maria transferred to Bakersfield and became a dual scholarship recipient in volleyball and track.

They got together just weeks before Maria graduated and moved back home to Monrovia, and then dated long-distance for two years. Maria returned to Bakersfield to earn her teaching credential in 1988 and they married on a hot July 14, 1990.

They picked July because it was the only month Alan wasn’t coaching track and Maria wasn’t coaching volleyball. Maria has coached the sport at Stockdale High since it opened in 1991.

In 1993 and 1997, the Collatzes welcomed their daughters, Alex and Tatum. Maria described her and Alan as a “great team” juggling their work commitments and the girls’ heavy schedules of school and multiple sports.

Collatz’s family (l to r):His son-in-law, David Sellens, daughters, Alex Sellens and Tatum Collatz, Collatz, and his wife, Maria.

Alan has always been a very involved dad, taking the girls to school every morning (even during what Maria called the “preschool ‘daddy, don’t leave me’ days”), picking them up when Maria was busy with volleyball, and giving them extra hours of sports practice after homework was done.

“He did the piggy tails on the girls when they were little, he did the whole nine yards, Maria said. “He’s still pretty proud of the fact he could pull that off.”

Alex elaborated. Her dad’s pig tails seemed to give her good luck on the playing field, so he did them before her practices and games from age 8 on.

“It was really a thing until college, the lucky pig tails,” she said, laughing.

Alex and Tatum are also superstar athletes. Tatum was captain of the 2018 CSUB swim team and a two-time all-WAC winner. Alex was a three-time All-American and Pac 12 champion in discus at USC, and will compete at Olympic Trials for the second time next June.

Alex attributes 95 percent of her success to her dad’s coaching and 5 percent to her own work and talent.

“He was involved in everything and his standards were so high for my sister and I,” said Alex, who teaches 5th grade at Suburu School in Bakersfield. “The way that he did it, though, wasn’t overbearing or scary or strict. He just had high expectations and we didn’t want to disappoint him. We just loved him so much that to disappoint dad would have been the most devastating thing for us.”

Collatz high-fives his daughter Tatum at one of her first swim meets, when she was about 5.

And he didn’t just set high standards, he helped the girls meet them, Alex said. Same went for academics. He also made sure their egos were in check, Alex said, like when she was being recruited by 65 colleges.

“It probably would have been easy for me to get arrogant or be very prideful,” she said. “But he just reminded me to be thankful that God gave me these gifts and opportunities, and to just be humble.”