Head Coach Annette Reiter (9th season)
High School: Gloucester Catholic
College: Widener University (1983)
Major: Nursing
Grad School: Rutgers University-Camden (2018)
Degree: Masters of Arts
Annette Reiter begins her ninth season as head coach of the Rutgers-Camden women’s basketball program, looking to return the Scarlet Raptors to the form that produced four consecutive winning seasons from 2015-16 through 2018-19. During the shortened 2020-21 campaign, the Scarlet Raptors went 0-6, undermined by the combination of key graduation losses and several players opting out of the abbreviated pandemic-altered season.
After posting four straight winning seasons, Reiter saw her Scarlet Raptors compile a 12-13 record during the 2019-20 campaign with a young team that featured only two upperclassmen. The young roster included nine freshmen.
The 2019-20 campaign was a highlight reel for senior Fatimah Williams, who joined the 1,000-point club on her way to finishing tied for sixth place on the program’s career chart with 1,240 points. Williams led the New Jersey Athletic Conference in scoring on her way to earning numerous honors, including ECAC First Team.
As Reiter enters her ninth season at Rutgers-Camden, she owns an 84-100 record with the Scarlet Raptors, with many of those losses coming in her first two seasons while rebuilding the program. She ranks second in program history with her 84 wins and is fourth in winning percentage (.457).
Reiter led the Scarlet Raptors to a 15-11 record during the 2018-19 campaign, setting a program mark with Rutgers-Camden’s fourth consecutive winning season. During that span the Raptors posted a 58-46 mark and qualified for three ECAC tournaments and three NJAC playoff berths.
The 2018-19 season saw Williams earn NJAC Second Team honors, while senior Gabby Greene and freshman Wykira Johnson-Kelly both captured NJAC Honorable Mention. Greene joined the 1,000-point career club early in the season and finished her four-year career as the program’s all-time leader with 280 three-point field goals.
Annette Reiter's coaching record
Reiter became the Scarlet Raptors’ head coach for the 2013-14 season and was charged with rebuilding a program that had seen only one winning season since 2002-03. She inherited a team that went 10-15 the year before she arrived and lost its top two players. Reiter took over a program that had graduated one of its all-time great players in 1,000-point scorer Brittany Turner. Shortly before Reiter’s first semester on campus, her top returning player, Lillian Chukwueze, transferred to a Division II program. Chukwueze had averaged 13.7 points and team-leading totals of 9.5 rebounds, 63 assists and 48 steals in her previous season. Once the season started, Reiter lost her starting point guard, Monica Burch, to an early-season injury. With a youth-laden team – the Raptors had only two seniors, who combined to start six games – Rutgers-Camden struggled to a 5-19 record overall and a 0-18 record in the NJAC.
After facing a trial by fire in her first season as the Scarlet Raptors’ head coach, Reiter’s team showed remarkable improvement during the 2014-15 campaign. Rutgers-Camden finished with a 9-16 record, including a 5-13 log in the NJAC. That record was the Raptors’ best NJAC mark since they went 12-6 and won the conference crown during the 2002-03 season. Reiter’s team peaked in the second half of the year, posting a 5-6 record in its final 11 conference games and an 8-9 overall mark in its final 17 contests.
Along the way, the Scarlet Raptors snapped a 30-game NJAC losing streak, beating New Jersey City University, 65-63, on Jan. 14, 2015. Not only was it Rutgers-Camden’s first NJAC win since Jan. 23, 2013. It was followed by a 76-57 victory over Ramapo College three days later, giving the Raptors their first
two-game conference winning streak since the 2011-12 season (Dec. 7 and Jan. 7).
Early in the season, freshman Cara Racobaldo set a program record by making 21 consecutive foul shots. Another stellar freshman, Michelle Obasi, captured NJAC Rookie of the Week honors on Dec. 1, becoming the first Raptor to earn that honor since Tina Croxton on Dec. 20, 2010. The Raptors also saw Kamari Talley earn NJAC Player of the Week honors Jan. 19, the first conference player of the week honoree for the Rutgers-Camden women since Chukwueze on Feb. 4, 2013.
The Scarlet Raptors saw a pair of players – Talley and Alex Gravinese – earn NJAC Honorable Mention, giving them the program’s most all-conference players since both Erin James and Megan Rulon earned NJAC Honorable Mention for the 2003-04 season. Reiter’s program also represented Rutgers-Camden when senior Tanjae Lewis was named the school’s honoree in the NJAIAW Woman of the Year program. Obasi gave Reiter’s program another NJAIAW Woman of the Year recipient during the 2017-18 scholastic year.
The Scarlet Raptors’ student-athletes weren’t the only honorees from the women’s basketball program during the year. Reiter received a prestigious honor on March 24, 2015 when she was inducted into the Gloucester County Sports Hall of Fame.
By the 2015-16 season, Reiter produced her first winning season (15-11), starting its program-record four-year streak of winning campaigns. It was the Raptors’ first winning season since the 2011-12 campaign and only the second winning season since the 2002-03 team won the program’s only NJAC title. Reiter’s 2015-16 team produced as many conference victories as the previous four years combined (10) and qualified for the program’s first NJAC playoff berth since that 2002-03 team. The Scarlet Raptors went on to play in their first ECAC tournament since the 2001-02 team.
Rutgers-Camden’s young and talented nucleus was anchored by Talley, a senior who was named the NJAC Player of the Year and went on to earn
D3hoops.com All-America Third Team honors.
All of those accomplishments earned Reiter recognition as Rutgers-Camden’s Coach of the Year for the 2015-16 scholastic year. She added her second Rutgers-Camden Coach of the Year honor during the 2017-18 scholastic year.
Reiter’s fourth Scarlet Raptor team posted a 14-12 overall record in 2016-17 and became the first women’s basketball team at Rutgers-Camden to earn back-to-back ECAC tournament berths since the teams in 2000-01 and 2001-02.
Rutgers-Camden’s 4-0 start to the 2016-17 season tied a program record for the best undefeated start. In winning six of its first seven games, the team tied a program record for the second-best start ever, passed only by the 2011-12 club, which jumped out of the gate at 9-1. By winning their sixth game on Dec. 3, the Scarlet Raptors reached six wins earlier than any club in program history.
Reiter’s 2017-18 club went 14-12 for the second consecutive season, but the Raptors’ 11-7 NJAC mark was their best conference record since a 12-6 record in 2002-03, when they won their only NJAC championship.
Rutgers-Camden’s 2017-18 team featured numerous milestones, as Racobaldo and Greene set program career records for assists and three-pointers, respectively, while Obasi joined the 1,000-point club. Both Obasi and Greene captured All-NJAC recognition and the team received numerous academic honors.
The Scarlet Raptors’ resurgence started when Reiter, a former scholastic basketball star and high school coach in South Jersey, was hired in May, 2013, as the Scarlet Raptors’ head coach. She came to Rutgers-Camden after one year as the head coach at Penn State-Abington, and without time to recruit, she weathered a series of big setbacks while guiding the Scarlet Raptors to a 5-19 campaign during the 2013-14 season. Her first Raptor win came in a 67-50 victory over Penn State-Berks in the Terry Greene Memorial Tournament consolation game, Nov. 17 at Franklin & Marshall College.
Fortunately for Reiter, she knows how to revive a basketball program. 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. She also has had plenty of experience in the NJAC, where she served for three seasons as an assistant coach at Rowan University.
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 High School. 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, third on the program’s all-time list, and graduated from Widener in 1983 as a Nursing major.
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, Reiter 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 before coaching one year at Penn State-Abington and returning to the NJAC as the head coach at Rutgers-Camden.
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 received her Doctorate Degree from University of the Sciences, graduating summa cum laude in May, 2014. Her son Brad graduated magna cum laude in 2014 from the Rutgers School of Law on the Camden campus. Her daughter Kristina was a member of the Widener University women’s basketball team before graduating in May, 2015. Kristina Reiter, who served as an assistant coach at Rutgers-Camden for four seasons, received her Doctoral degree of Physical Therapy from Widener in 2018.
Annette Reiter received her Masters of Arts degree from Rutgers-Camden in 2018. She resides in Sewell, New Jersey, with her husband David.
