After 11 seasons at the helm of the Baker University women’s basketball team, head coach Susan Decker announced her resignation Monday.

“There is a time and a feeling that I had that I needed a change, and this opportunity going into full-time teaching presented itself in that very way,” Decker said.

Decker is a part-time faculty member this spring, but will begin teaching full-time in the fall.

“I just felt it was a good career move for me to step away from coaching for a little while at least and do something different,” Decker said. “I’ve been told, and I think it is true, that there are other things besides coaching. There is a life outside of basketball.”

Despite the decision to resign, Decker knows there is plenty she will miss about coaching.

“The first thing that I told my team (Sunday) that I would miss (are) the relationships that I have with the kids,” Decker said. “I think that is the thing that is really important to me and has been something pretty special over the past 11 years I have been at Baker … Secondly, as the competitive person that I am, I will probably miss the competition. Those are probably the top two things.”

Decker believes the players she has coached over the past 11 seasons have positively affected her, and the players feel the same way about how she has impacted them.

“She just always wanted the best for us,” senior JaNeil Robinson said. “No matter what it took, she would do it.”

A small committee, spear-headed by Athletic Director Theresa Yetmar, will make the search for Decker’s replacement.

“We’re going to very quickly get in the process, but we are also going to make sure we do things the right way,” Yetmar said. “We now have a search committee in place and job postings will be posted by the middle to the end of this week.”

Around this time last year, the men’s basketball program was in the same situation with the head coaching transition between Rick Weaver and Brett Ballard.

“I certainly think our recent experience through the similar search process with basketball in particular will be an asset,” Yetmar said. “I think (Baker is) a very attractive position. Baker is a great academic institution and has a program that has a history of winning. (There are) great kids in the program, and I think it will be a job that a lot of people will apply for.”