Rob Collias

Rob Collias has had a passion for journalism from the time he was a youngster growing up in Eugene, Ore., watching University of Oregon basketball and football games. Each morning he would run to the front door to grab the hometown newspaper’s sports section. 


As a junior year at Oregon, one of his first assignments for the Oregon Daily Emerald, the daily student newspaper, came in fall 1984 when the Ducks beat the two-time defending national champions from Hawai’i in the NCAA volleyball tournament, a foreshadow of things to come for Collias.


He was the ODE sports editor for the 1985-86 school year, which vaulted him to a summer internship at the Eugene Register-Guard. In 1987, he took the chance to work at the Pacific Daily News in Guam, where he covered the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. 

After two years in Guam, Collias moved to Honolulu to work for the Honolulu Advertiser in 1989. After one year on O’ahu, he took a sportswriting job at The Maui News where he worked for 34 years.

Collias has been honored many times for his work in journalism, including the National Sports Media Association Hawai’i Sportswriter of the Year in 2021 and first place in column writing from the Society of Professional Journalists Hawai’i Chapter in 2008.