Some coaches talk about what it takes to compete on the world’s biggest stage. Four at San Diego State have actually done it.

Across softball, track and field, and volleyball, SDSU is led by Olympians who wore the red, white and blue for Team USA. Together they have gold, silver and bronze medals, national championships and record books full of their names. Now they are channeling that competitive fire into the next generation of Aztecs. Here is a look at each one.

Stacey Nuveman Deniz knows exactly what it takes to win, and she has the medals to prove it. She represented Team USA at three Olympic Games, winning gold in Sydney in 2000 and Athens in 2004, then silver in Beijing in 2008. She also helped Team USA to two World Championship titles, a World Cup title and two Pan American gold medals.

It all started at UCLA, where she helped the Bruins win the 1999 NCAA national championship. She was a four-time first-team All-American and a three-time Pac-10 Player of the Year. She finished her college career with 90 home runs, a .945 slugging percentage and four NCAA records, including marks for walks and intentional walks. She was named the inaugural USA Softball National Collegiate Player of the Year in 2002 and entered the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame in 2012.

As a coach, she has kept right on winning. Nuveman Deniz joined SDSU as an assistant in 2008, became assistant head coach in 2010 and associate head coach in 2013. After 13 seasons under former head coach Kathy Van Wyk, she took over the program in June 2021. Her first season in 2022 ended 39-16 with the Aztecs’ first Mountain West championship since 2014, and she earned Mountain West Coach of the Year. In 2023, SDSU reached its first NCAA Super Regional, and her staff was named NFCA West Region Coaching Staff of the Year. She won Coach of the Year again in 2024 as the Aztecs took the Mountain West regular-season title. Her teams won the Mountain West Tournament in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Her reach goes beyond San Diego. In 2018, she led the Chicago Bandits to the National Pro Fastpitch Championship Series, and she was named head coach of the Bandits in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League for its inaugural 2025 season.

SDSU Women’s Track and Field has put together a strong run over the last two seasons, with conference titles, individual NCAA qualifiers and standout national performances. Much of that success traces back to head coach Shelia Burrell, who knows a thing or two about winning.

Burrell was an English and American Studies major and a track athlete at UCLA. She won national titles at the USA Outdoor Championships in 1999, 2002 and 2003, then went on to represent the United States at the World Championships, the Pan American Games and the Olympics. A two-time Olympian, her best finish came at the 2004 Athens Games, where she placed fourth in the heptathlon. That event alone is a feat: seven events, including the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200 meters, long jump, javelin and 800 meters. She also took bronze in the heptathlon at the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton, and silver in both the heptathlon and the 4x100 relay at the 1999 Pan American Games.

Head coach at SDSU since 2009, Burrell has brought that Olympic edge to the Aztrack. Her athletes include four NCAA individual champions, 67 All-Americans, 81 Mountain West individual champions and 15 Mountain West relay champions, and they have broken more than 50 school records. She is a six-time Mountain West Coach of the Year.

Her influence shows in her athletes, too. This past season, Jenna Fee Feyerabend followed her coach’s footsteps into the heptathlon, winning gold and setting a meet record at the Mountain West Outdoor Championships. She also earned First-Team CSC Academic All-America honors and placed in the top 15 at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Ore.

With SDSU joining the Pac-12 this year, a new era begins, and the Aztecs have an Olympian guiding the chase for a conference title.

This season, the Aztecs have won 10 of their most recent 11 matches, sit at No. 2 in the standings and just clinched a spot in the Pac-12 Tournament.

His Olympic lessons show up in how his team communicates. Hilliard wants players to be precise with their teammates, and generic cheering does not cut it. “‘Let’s Go!!,’ doesn’t fly in our gym,” he said. “You must be using strategy in your communication to your fellow athletes.” The goal is for every word to have a purpose that can change the next play.

The Olympics also taught him to adapt. Hilliard says he has had to evolve his philosophies as the game has changed, and that working with elite personalities, coaching through high-pressure moments and living life on the road prepared him for the modern game.

Few Americans have done more in volleyball than Steve “Red” Timmons. He played in three straight Summer Olympics, winning gold in 1984 and 1988 and bronze in 1992, and became the first American man to win three Olympic medals in indoor volleyball. He was named MVP of the 1984 Olympics by the International Volleyball Federation. Known for pioneering back-row hitting, Timmons also helped USC win the 1980 NCAA men’s volleyball title before playing professionally overseas. He entered the International Volleyball Hall of Fame in 1998.

Timmons joined SDSU women’s volleyball as an assistant coach in February 2020, after working as an elite coach with Wave Volleyball Club beginning in 2013. Head coach Brent Hilliard welcomed him to the staff, and the two now work side by side, bringing international experience and player development expertise to the Aztecs.

His biggest lesson from the Olympics is about resetting. “The most important thing I learned as an Olympian is to move on to the next play quickly,” Timmons said. Bad contacts, errors and questionable calls can pull players out of the moment, and dwelling on them can cost a team the next few points. Timmons says the past is only useful for learning, so the best move is to take the lesson and get ready for what is next.

That perspective also shapes his coaching. Timmons sees every athlete as climbing a ladder of improvement, handling both successes and failures along the way. His own struggle to reach the Olympics, and every skill he had to figure out on the way, gives him credibility with the athletes he coaches.

Four sports, four Olympians, one campus. Gold-medal resumes are impressive, but what stands out about this group is what they do with them: teaching communication, resilience and a winning mentality to Aztecs who are chasing their own big moments. San Diego is lucky to have them.