Looking for the best volleyball experience she could find, Deitre Collins-Parker went from Ithaca, N.Y. to Athens, Ga. and back again in a few short months - but don't call her indecisive.
After all, Collins-Parker had much more than her own coaching career to think about.
After leaving the head job at Cornell in January to take an assistant position at Georgia - albiet a more prestigious one than manning an Ivy League program - she reversed course this week, returning to the Big Red after her husband, Dale Parker, landed a paid job as an assistant with the Cornell women's basketball program.
And Collins-Parker didn't go to Georgia for nothing - the Bulldogs, already one of the best programs in the Southeastern Conference, were turning a new page under hotshot coach Joel McCartney, who had previously led Winthrop to the NCAA Tournament in five of his six seasons there.
He has brought members of his Eagles staff with him to Georgia, but had settled on the Cornell coach early on as a building block for his vision of the program.
That's not lost on Collins-Parker, who knows a winner when she sees one - she won two national championships and two player of the year awards during her collegiate days at Hawaii.
She implied that her recent move may well not have been in her best career interests as a coach.
But "at the same time, I am excited about returning to Cornell for my husband's sake since becoming a basketball coach at a Division I school is a dream come true for him," she said. "For me, I had a great experience at Cornell and will be glad to be back."
As for Parker, he spent the past season with the Big Red as a volunteer assistant coach. Cornell went 12-15 last season but had a winning mark in league play. Jeomi Maduka, an All-Ivy wing who is also dominant on the track for the Big Red, will provide a solid foundation for the squad to build around.
The specifics hardly seemed that important to the Parkers, though - what mattered was a new opportunity.
"Deitre and Dale initially made a decision to come and join the Bulldog family because it was in the best interest of their family welfare," McCartney said. "A combination of Dale's family [being] planted in Georgia and his job opportunities [being] extremely limited in Ithaca made joining our program an ideal fit.
"However, the situation is reversed now that Cornell has hired Dale as their assistant basketball coach and Deitre's head coaching position remained open."
