Annette Reiter is coming home to South Jersey and home to the New Jersey Athletic Conference.

A former scholastic basketball star and high school coach in South Jersey, Reiter has been hired as the new women’s basketball head coach at Rutgers University-Camden after one season as the head coach at Penn State-Abington. In returning to her South Jersey roots, she also returns to the NJAC, where she served for three seasons as an assistant coach at Rowan University.

“I’m more than thrilled,” said Reiter, who was a star player at both Gloucester Catholic High School and Widener University. “I know the teams that participate in NJAC, which I consider one of the top Division III conferences in the country. I’m familiar with the program. I’ve been watching Rutgers-Camden play for years. I feel like I know the prospective student-athlete population in South Jersey. I would love to see South Jersey athletes stay in South Jersey to compete at the collegiate level. It’s a great recruiting opportunity for me.”

In her one season at Penn State-Abington, Reiter helped the Nittany Lions post a 9-16 record, a major improvement over their 0-23 mark from the previous season.

“It’s tough leaving Penn State after one year, but I feel we made great strides building that program,” said Reiter, who served as an assistant coach for three years at the Scarlet Raptors’ NJAC rival, Rowan University, before landing the head job with the Nittany Lions. “I want to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity ahead of me. It’s so intriguing and so exciting.”

Reiter has a long and successful basketball resume, both as a player and during her coaching career. She played on four state championship teams at Gloucester Catholic, where her sister Lisa Angelotti Gedaka is now the head coach. The former Annette Angelotti went on to star at Widener University, winning three Middle Atlantic Conference championships during her career from 1979-83. She scored 1,568 points, which ranks third on the program’s all-time list, and graduated from Widener in 1983 as a Nursing major.

“We are excited to have Annette on our staff,” said Rutgers-Camden Director of Athletics Jeff Dean. “She brings knowledge and experience that will enable her to continue to develop our women’s basketball program. Annette is well known and respected in the South Jersey basketball community and we are very fortunate to have her.”

Reiter takes over a Scarlet Raptor team which posted a 10-15 mark during the 2012-13 campaign.

“I’m confident with the players on this team that we can really compete in the NJAC this season and in seasons to come,” Reiter said. “The campus is nice and the academics… Having a Rutgers diploma – it’s a nationally-renowned school.”

Reiter started her coaching career as an assistant at her alma mater, Gloucester Catholic High School, during the 1991-92 season. One of her former stars, Cheryl Kulesa, eventually earned NJAC Player of the Year and All-America honors at Rutgers-Camden while leading the Scarlet Raptors to the 2003 conference title.

After six seasons with the Rams, she became the head coach for the Glassboro High School girls’ basketball team from 1997-2000 and then took over the reins of the Bishop Eustace Prep program from 2000-2005. Her Crusaders won the 2002 Parochial B state championship, giving her state titles as both a player and a coach.

Reiter took a break from high school coaching in 2005 as she watched her own children play basketball. She remained involved with the game through the AAU Tri-State Tar Heels, coaching their youth club through 2009. She joined the Rowan staff for the 2009-10 season and now returns to the NJAC as a head coach at Rutgers-Camden.

“It is fabulous,” she said. “I’ve been striving for the opportunity to be a head college basketball coach in South Jersey.”

Reiter also found the time to write a book, “Parenting an Athlete,” which was published in 2011. Her daughter Alyssa played at NJAC member Richard Stockton College and her daughter Kristina will be a junior on the Widener University women’s basketball team during the 2013-14 season. Her son Brad begins his third year this fall at the Rutgers School of Law on the Camden campus.

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