Nick Garcia
Steve Collins celebrates during a game on January 20, 2026.
Steve Collins has a passion for mentoring young people: ‘You can influence lives.’
Before Steve Collins was hired in 1998 as head coach of the Vel Phillips Memorial High School boys basketball team, the Spartans were not listed among the best teams in the Madison area.
“I was the only applicant,” Collins says. “I got the job in October of that year. I mean, I was thrown in the deep end, like here you go. You got four weeks. And it was not a job that people were knocking the doors down for.”
Twenty-seven seasons later, Collins, a math teacher at Memorial, is the dean of the Big 8 basketball coaches. His teams have won three state titles and 14 conference titles (in a row, from 2004 to 2017). He was named state coach of the year in 2004 and 2011. Going into their Feb. 2 game against Verona, the Spartans have a 16-1 record and sit atop the Big 8 Conference standings.
And in December, Collins collected his 500th victory as head coach of the Spartans.
At 59, he brings as much energy to the sidelines as he ever has, though his voice has lost a bit of its foghorn resonance. Throughout games, he wears a path between the scorer’s table and the corner as he alternately encourages his team and critiques the referees.
Collins traces his competitiveness to a childhood spent trying to best his older brother in whatever sport was being played at Warner Park. But it might be his parents, teachers who met at Madison’s Sherman Elementary, who ignited a fire for coaching and mentoring young people.
“You can influence lives,” he says. “To be honest, they listen to you, more than in my stats class. Because it means something to them.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, high school basketball was often a hot ticket on Friday nights in Madison. Rivalry games filled gyms. The shutdown came in mid-March, just as the playoffs were reaching a crescendo. Teams wouldn’t take the court again for another 20 months. With a program like Memorial’s, where traditions and the continuity that comes with a veteran coach are an advantage, it resulted in a setback.
“COVID sucked,” is how Collins succinctly puts it, sitting in the Memorial varsity gym after a practice last week. “We lost the 2021 season, the following year we had masks.” Not only that, the team lost its gym for summer training sessions, relocating to Toki Middle School for three years due to construction at Memorial.
The basketball survived, but everything outside the lines that differentiates a high school program from a club team or pickup game needed to be rebuilt.
“I had to literally teach them everything over again, stuff that the older kids would have told the younger kids, like coach is the last one on the bus and the seniors sit in the back, here’s what we wear on game day and all the things that just kind of happen got lost,” Collins says. “I had to type up like seven pages and walk them through it.”
But it’s clear Collins was energized by that process. He celebrates everything about high school hoops, from the Memorial gym’s rickety wooden bleachers to three-game weeks. He’s even philosophical about the two biggest changes he’s witnessed in the game over 27 seasons: the prominence of three-point shooting and an increase in physical play.
The rise of NBA star Stephen Curry caused offense to become all about threes and layups, a trend that changed how the sport is played at all levels. And the rugged play Collins bemoans was on display during a Jan. 20 game against Middleton.
“There was one time when I thought you could have called a police officer. There were like four guys lying on the floor,” he says. “That’s the way it is now. I don’t love it. I love the more pure version of the game. The girls’ game is a little bit more pure in that respect, without the physicality.”
Collins hasn’t made a decision yet, but he’s contemplating the end of his run at Memorial (”I wanna go travel and spend some time with my wife and my dogs”), simultaneously insisting he is having a great time with this year’s team.
“It’s like when you take your kids to the amusement park. You want to leave before they start crying,” he says. “I want to leave when I still love the game, I still love coaching. I could still see myself doing it next year, but it’s time. I still have a lot of energy, but I don’t have what I did in my 30s.
“No matter what happens, I love this group. It’s a good group to leave with.”
As if on cue, Memorial English teacher and former football coach Mike Harris strolls through the gym and offers a fist bump.
“Keep it up,” Harris says. “That’s all. Just keep it up.”
