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.”