Nearly 30 years have passed since Deitre Collins showed up in Manoa and began to swat volleyballs at a startling rate. That rare gift, and a rarer-still ability to get from here to there remarkably quickly, shaped a life that has never strayed far from the game. Or Hawai'i.

"Once I played in Japan in front of 12,000 people making noise," recalled now Collins-Parker, who has played all over the world. "They were happy, cheering for us even though we were America. That was the closest I've ever come to feeling anything like what I felt in Hawai'i. There is definitely not any college experience like it, or anywhere else in the world. Nothing is even close."

The middle blocker from Lancaster, Calif., was an integral part of the most successful decade in Rainbow Wahine volleyball history. She was the intimidating focal point of a team that would be the first to win back-to-back NCAA championships and become the most dominant force in the game early in the 1980s.

When Hawai'i won its second straight title in Kentucky one snowy 1983 afternoon, UCLA coach Andy Banachowski verbalized what he had just witnessed: "It would be hard to argue with the thought of them being one of the best teams ever."

At the final four, it took the 'Bows less than 2 hours — total — to beat the Bruins and Stanford.

A year earlier, Hawai'i had avenged a devastating 1981 regional loss to USC with a just-as-devastating rally from two games down against the Trojans to win the 1982 title. The season that followed was so flawless it could have been anticlimactic but for two in-your-face facts: The Rainbow Wahine's work ethic was relentless and their level of play phenomenal.

After losing 10 matches as freshmen, those 1983 seniors went 104-5 their final three seasons. The only losses the final two years were best-of-three tournament matches.

To this day, UH coach Dave Shoji has trouble describing precisely what made Collins the best female athlete in college, in any sport, that 1983-84 year.

"This is probably not the right term," he said, "but she had the 'quickest-twitch' ability of anybody in the game at that time. She was fast — a fast jump, a fast arm, quick feet. That just separated her from others."

Her jump was not only quick, it was high. Her arm was not only fast, it was powerful. Collins earned a starting position almost immediately and lined up against All-American Diane Sebastian every day in practice for two years. Both thrived, along with everyone else on that unassuming juggernaut of a team.

"I remember the first time I saw Deitre I thought, 'As athletic as she looks, I hope she plays that well,' " Sebastian recalled. "She made a huge improvement at UH. She was pretty raw. She could play, she could hit, but she learned how to work hard and be a team player. She got to be a much better blocker and all-around player."

Collins still remembers a training trip to Japan her freshman year that opened her eyes to the next level.

"We were playing Nittaidai and high school teams and they were so fast I had to adapt," she said. "I remember coming back and thinking, 'This is easy to get where we need to be to block the ball because college teams are not nearly as fast as those in Japan.' My time on the national team I was much better against Asian teams than European teams. I didn't jump as high as others, but I was quick and read the setter well and was where I needed to be."

Collins was the ideal complement to teammates like Kori and Kris Pulaski, Lisa Strand, Missy Yomes, Marcie Wurts, Joyce Ka'apuni and Sista Palakiko, who were probably a little too small for Division I, but too driven and talented to actually ... well, lose.

Collins, who married basketball player and coach Dale Parker a few years ago, would soar to the next level despite 10 operations on her troublesome legs. She was invited to play with the national team before she graduated and won the Broderick Cup as the best female athlete in college — over people like Jackie Joyner. The year before Tracy Caulkins had won.

"I didn't even consider preparing a speech," Collins recalled. "When Sally Ride announced my name it was nothing I could ever again dream for myself. Those Olympians there, the Cheryl Millers, people you see and hear about, why wouldn't they win? Even recently, with the 25th anniversary award, standing on the stage with these people, I'm thinking, 'What am I doing here? I'm a volleyball player.' "

A very distinguished volleyball player. Collins started in the middle at the 1988 Olympics. She played professionally overseas, then started a coaching career that brought her home to Southern California earlier this year when she was named San Diego State's head coach.

She fully appreciates the volleyball atmosphere at SDSU, where she will try to return the Aztecs to the prominence of years past. But realistically, she knows she will never see anything like what she lived through in Hawai'i. The thought of being one of the most prominent athletes since statehood blows her mind.

"It still seems like an out-of-body experience when I hear people introduce me and say what I've done," Collins said. "I'm like, 'No kidding, she must be pretty good.' It never ever, ever seems real. This is an amazing thing and it can only happen in Hawai'i.

"My first day at SDSU some kid said, 'Are you Deitre Collins, didn't you play volleyball?' I was like, 'Child, you were not born when I was playing.' They said my mom and dad are from Hawai'i and talked about you. That doesn't happen everywhere. It's amazing.

"It's funny, being married, for my husband to see it was amazing," Collins continued. "He was with me in Hawai'i and saw how people responded. It's so long after and people still say or do something. He had heard, but now he's like, 'You must have been all right.' He played in South America and friends tell me how people treated him. We have these two pasts neither of us can quite understand. But he's seen it, he's ready to move to Hawai'i any day. He really, truly loved it. He recognized what I was saying about how kind people are, the uniqueness and specialness of the people in Hawai'i."