Aug. 12, 2008
By Tony Mancuso, GoPSUsports.com writer
With more than 12,000 living Penn State student-athlete alums, the challenge of keeping the network together seems like a daunting task.
Keeping tabs on a list of people that big would be tough for a staff of 10 people, let alone a single person. That one man behind the scenes in the athletic department responsible for staying in touch with all of the former Nittany Lions is Nate Althouse, Varsity "S" coordinator.
Althouse, who is just past his one-year anniversary on the job, wears many hats as the Varsity "S" coordinator, as he works for development, alumni relations and athletics. He does not have a typical 9-5 workday. Althouse is involved in numerous meetings and events on a daily basis. Nevertheless, his job is to keep the living athletics alums connected to Penn State.
"Everything we do with Varsity "S" is getting our alums to the point where they are connected to their university," Althouse said. "And we are trying to provide that service for our athletes."
The basic goal for Althouse and the Varsity "S" program is to keep the alums tied to the Penn State family. Although it sounds simple, keeping tabs on 12,000 people is a difficult challenge. When Althouse began his career as Varsity "S" coordinator, he faced a database that is wrought with errors. Althouse ran into issues that included athletes coded in the database as playing their careers at University Park when they may have actually played at a Commonwealth campus.
With that being said, Althouse spent the first year on the job trying to clean the data. The key to his job is being able to access clean data in the Varsity "S" data system. When the databases operate in the appropriate manner, Althouse is able to perform a search for a former Nittany Lion in just a matter of minutes. In turn, that allows Varsity "S" to stay in touch with alums who have moved and lost touch with Penn State.
2007 Varsity "S" Day- John Dague showing off his varsity sweater. |
"This is our legacy," Althouse said. "The reason I got into this is because Penn State has done so much for me. The way I have always felt about this is that we never leave, especially basketball for me. We are not former players. Playing a sport at Penn State, we are part of a small network. So, it is our responsibility as a university to say, `hey we appreciate the time you put in here' and we want you to come back and relive the memories and connect with teammates."
As Althouse mentioned, the network of athletes is an elite group. He is a member of that group, as he played on the Penn State basketball team from 1992-95. With that being said, keeping the athletes tied to Penn State hits close to home for Althouse.
"We just want to bring people back to make them feel welcome," Althouse said. "With the expense of travel these days, we just want people to come back and take a deep breath and remember what was like to be here."
One of many neat things Althouse and his staff are able to do is put together a historical packet for returning alums. The Varsity "S" staff plans for visiting alums by visiting the archives at Paterno Library. Once the alums arrive, Althouse presents them with a packet of photos, news clippings and press releases from when the alum played at Penn State.
"We never want people to forget what it was like to be a Penn State athlete and what it was like to be here," Althouse said. "That is what we set out to do. We want to bring people back to keep the heritage of Penn State. We want to give true meaning to the phrase We are...Penn State."