‘Thanks for Coming’: Memorial Basketball Coach Steve Collins Retires After 27 Seasons

As the final buzzer sounded at the Kohl Center and the Spartans’ state title hopes slipped away, Steve Collins didn’t hang his head.

The longtime Vel Phillips Memorial High School boys basketball coach, known in part for his animated facial expressions and tense posture, almost melted as he moved down the bench, placing a hand on a player’s shoulder and sharing words of encouragement among the roaring crowd. 

The Spartans had just finished the season as state runner-up.

But for Collins — closing a nearly 30-year run leading Memorial basketball — the moment looked a lot more like pride than disappointment as he closed the chapter of one of Madison’s most enduring coaching careers.

Make small talk with anyone in the Madison area about high school basketball, coaching or Memorial teachers, and Collins is bound to come up. He probably coached your neighbor’s grandson, played high school basketball with your coworker or taught your friend in an AP statistics class. Or, maybe you’ve seen a local newspaper photo of the boys basketball coach toeing the sideline during a game across his almost 30-year career.

Collins is just as much of a staple in the community as the metal staple holding together his 25-page, double-sided packet, “Madison Memorial Record Book: A Statistical History of Boys Basketball, 1966–2025.” 

Pages are filled with tables including “Top 10 Single Season Assist Leaders” and “Highest Game Point Totals,” along with a chart itemizing 12 different data points for the top players in the school’s history. But what stands out most is buried in the last two pages: a team record history, listing the final place of the team and associated head coach.

Excluding the Covid-19 year, Memorial just wrapped up its 58th season of boys basketball. Collins has led the team for the past 27. And when the 2025-26 season ended, Collins had one more stat to add: retiring as the longest-serving head coach in school history.

Coaching for 45% of the program’s history, Collins tenure includes:

• Three WIAA State Tournament Championship titles, five runner-up titles
• 14 consecutive conference championships (a state record)
• Two first-place wins at national tournaments
• 500+ game wins 
• Dean of the Big 8 Basketball Conferences
• Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association's Hall of Fame inductee

While statistics are clearly a passion of Collins — on and off the court — they are not the only measure of his career. His impact will be found in the team dynamics he strived for, the student-athletes he supported and the coaches he stood with on the sidelines.

“The championships, the wins, the records — those are byproducts of building something bigger than any one person,” Collins said. “They're the result of teams buying in, working together and competing for each other. That's what I care about. It will all live on past me.”

FROM PURGOLDER TO SPARTAN TO STATE

Collins has always been a part of the MMSD community. The son of two teachers in the district, he attended Madison East High School, serving as captain of the boys basketball and volleyball teams. He graduated from East in 1985, and attended Lawrence University, where he was a three-year captain of the basketball team. 

After earning a master's degree, he spent seven years assistant coaching in the Wausau School District prior to teaching and assistant coaching at Memorial in 1996. His wife, Mya, is a school psychologist in MMSD — often attending basketball games in a sweatshirt featuring a photo of his expressive coaching stances. His children, Drew and Emma, graduated from Memorial, with Drew also playing on the basketball team under his dad’s coaching.

When Collins applied for the head coach of boys basketball in 1998, the role was not exactly a hot commodity; Memorial had not made it to the regional finals since the 1991-92 season. 

“I just wanted to have a winning season, that was my first goal, because we were that bad,” Collins said. “Goal setting is so important to me. I had to break everything down into small pieces and focus on improvement.”

Aiming for a goal like winning state was barely on his radar. And yet, the Spartans claimed the state championships in 2005, 2009 and 2011, and the runner up titles in 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010 and of course, 2026. Two future NBA players would come out of the Spartans’ state run eras, Wesley Matthews (‘05) and Vander Blue (‘10). 

“The basketball journey I've had feels like a dream, in some respects,” Collins said, eyes glossy with tears. “It just doesn’t feel real.”

RITUALS AND RELATIONSHIPS

Every single Spartan home game day ran like clockwork for Collins.

With a freshly shaven face, he met the team in the gym for a shootaround before school. He wore the same blue suit and tie, even though most coaches nowadays wear athletic gear, and reviewed the game plan in identical order — first offensive strategy, then defensive.

He handed the game ball to the scorers.

“Don’t lose this!” He quipped every game.

Then he turned to famed announcer Jay Wilson and delivered the same greeting he’s used for decades: “Thanks for coming.”

Not thank you for attending. Not thanks for being here.

Always: “Thanks for coming.”

These rituals — “no, they’re not superstitions, they’re rituals, there is a difference,” Collins insisted — are a key part of his coaching method. They keep him focused and create a sense of consistency for the players.

The rituals vary from season to season: one year his tie always matched the color of the opposing team, another he wore the same outfit every game until the team lost. He even ate the exact same McDonald’s Happy Meal before every game.

“There’s no surprises,” Collins said, sitting beside a whiteboard filled with advanced statistical equations in his math classroom. “I don’t like to leave things up to chance.”

Fans in the stands know what to expect, too. The squeak of Collins’ shoes as he literally toes the sideline in wide, quick strides. The animated facial expressions reacting to every foul call and three-pointer. The way he drops into a seat and kicks the bench when frustration gets the better of him. 

Predictability, after all, is part of the system.

But as Collins teaches his statistics students, probability only goes so far. A free throw can fall short. A player can get injured. A season can be canceled. While that gap of unpredictability will always exist, for Collins, focusing on and believing in the team brings the best chance of success. 

Collins always knew building a team was about more than assembling a roster, but over time, he came to understand just how essential mutual trust is to a team’s success — among coaches and student-athletes alike.

Early in his career, he felt the need to do most of the talking at practice, to prove himself. Now, he leans on his staff, recognizing that others may be better suited to teach certain skills. What matters most is that players learn — not who delivers the message.

Because of that, Collins doesn’t just coach basketball. His players aren’t simply X’s and O’s in a playbook, but individuals with full lives beyond the gym — each navigating their own challenges and growth, and sometimes needing guidance off the court just as much as on it.

This dedication to the whole student is most obvious by the section of the whiteboard in Collins’ classroom that is dedicated to a list of “life lessons.” One of his favorites is encouraging students who are preparing to graduate to find the intersection of what they're good at and what makes them happy.

That connection is what generations of players carry with them long after their time on the court — and why one of the biggest honors for Collins is when former student-athletes reach out to him.

“One of my biggest successes as a coach that wouldn’t show up in any record book is getting to see the full-fledged humans former players become,” he said. “They might struggle in high school with where they fit in or feeling upset they don’t have more play time. But with the right coaching, the right team, the right family or community support, they’ll go far.”

Memorial JV Boys Head Basketball Coach and physical education teacher Billy Wilson has seen that in action from multiple perspectives. A 2021 graduate, Wilson is one of two former players now coaching alongside Collins — and a former student in his math class.

While the statistics lessons may have faded, the life lessons haven’t. Wilson remembers a section of the whiteboard in Collins’ classroom was dedicated to a list of “life lessons.” One of Collins’ favorites is encouraging students to find the intersection of what they're good at and what makes them happy. 

“You can be the best coach or teacher in the world with material, but if you can't connect with humans, you can't get buy-in,” Wilson said. “That is something I've really taken away, the ability to motivate and bring groups of players and students together and be successful.”

THE LAST DANCE

Newspaper clippings in varying stages of yellowing line the walls in Collins’ classroom like a miniature museum highlighting decades of team successes. Interspersed are team portraits, old play clipboards and even a Spartan rally towel. 

Nevertheless, being stuck in the past doesn’t seem to be an issue with Collins. It’s part of the reason he recoils at the word “legacy.”

“Legacy feels like it's about looking back at what I accomplished. But that's not what drives me,” he said. “What matters is what these kids are experiencing right now, what they're learning and what we're creating as a program. It's about them, not me.”

Just like the dynamics of his math classes change from period to period depending on the group of students, Memorial’s boys basketball team will be different without Collins at the helm — and he knows that’s a good thing.

“The next head coach can keep the stuff they like, but they need to put their own stamp on it,” Collins said. “I was under six or seven head coaches before I became one, I took a little piece from each one to discover my own process. The next coach has to be authentically themselves.”

Collins will still have plenty to keep him busy when the next school year comes and he’s not lesson planning or looking ahead to the basketball season. Joking that Mya won’t have to worry about him sitting at home bored, Collins said his days will be filled by visiting his children, hosting one of his several coaching podcasts or running his coaching mentorship company Teach Hoops.

Still, saying goodbye to an all-encompassing career like teaching and coaching after 30 years wasn’t a simple decision. Every postseason win could grow the desire to stay another season for even the most checked-out coach, let alone a tireless, committed leader like Collins. 

“You’ve got to leave the amusement park at noon, so the kids want to go back the next day,” Collins said. “If you leave at five and they're all crying and overtired as you're walking out, that’s rough on everyone. Leave on a strong note.”

And while the final buzzer at the Kohl Center signaled the end of one last run, it didn’t signal an ending so much as a passing forward — of a program, a culture and a belief in the team that players and coaches will carry on.