RALEIGH - What do Barack Obama, NFL coaches Mike Tomlin and Lane Kiffin and St. Augustine's women's basketball coach LaTanya Collins all have in common?

For Collins, Tomlin, Kiffin -- all head coaches in their 30s -- and Obama -- who is making a presidential run at 46 -- youth is a big part of their appeal.

Collins, hired this summer by St. Aug's at the age of 30, has the Falcons winning for the first time in years. The coach and her players believe the early success comes because she is young enough to have fresh ideas.

Less than a 10-year age gap, an understanding of what her players are going through and a fresh feel for the game have helped lift St. Aug's from the bottom of the CIAA to a four-game winning streak.

"The creativity plays a factor. I'm a little more in tune with what their interests are," Collins, the CIAA coach of the week, said. "That helps because I'm able to come at them from different directions. From the older perspective, but also from their perspective."

The 5-2 Falcons lead the CIAA a season after finishing a conference-worst 6-22 under former coach Antonio Davis.

Collins runs practices with laughter but games with authority.

"If you look at the country, you see a lot of shifts like that," she said. "Everyone's younger, teachers are younger. These are the faces that the kids I'm coaching now are used to receiving instruction from," Collins said. "It hasn't caused a problem, because these are the authoritative figures in their lives and they can make the shift."

Freshman forward Chanel Kinard said she is used to the youth.

"At my high school, the staff was young, so I had a young coach for all four years. She basically dealt with us the same way," Kinard said.

Senior guard Erica Knox, who is just seven years younger than her coach, said things are working because of Collin's connection with the team.

"I don't think it's about experience, because most of the time when people have experience, they're stuck in the old days, stuck on what they used to do -- but what people used to do might not work today," Knox said. "A younger coach can relate to what's going on now, not what happened years ago. That's why this thing has been able to work."

Collins, who came to Raleigh from Southern Vermont College where she was head coach and athletic director, said it's not just imagination that makes younger coaches the rage, but aggressiveness.

"I take a lot more chances than [older coaches]. I go on a limb sometimes, I trust myself. I'm either going to be right or wrong, and if I'm wrong, I know how to correct it," Collins said. "Before [this season], they thought, 'This is the structure! You don't disrupt the chain!' Now, with us, there a little bit of, 'Let's try something different today.' "

Collins doesn't see her youth as a hindrance with St. Aug's. "I look at experience as what has been entrusted to you in your period of time," Collins said. "What matters is what's under your experience umbrella. ... My experience umbrella is a little larger."

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