The setter of the German national volleyball team ends her promising career as a competitive athlete - at just 26 years old.
The departure of a highly talented player in a prominent position after only 44 international matches, where her predecessors played more than 200 games, seems like a retreat into private life because sport doesn't have enough to offer.
But Denise Imoudu has no grudge against the sport of volleyball.
She stops because it feels right for her.
It's about time to try something new.
For German volleyball, Imoudu's departure is the next bitter loss of a top player after Julius Thole ended his promising career in beach volleyball in the fall.
At the age of 24 and as a World Cup runner-up.
Thole no longer wanted to build his life and career plans on sand and would rather concentrate on his law studies.
Imoudu now explained that she wanted to spend more time with her family and be more flexible overall.
Due to the many games with SSC Schwerin and the national team, she was on the road a lot, "which is good at first", but she "lacked the freedom" to be able to decide for herself where the journey was going.
She is now taking this liberty: she is planning a longer camper tour.
And in a figurative sense, too, she now wants to shape her own path.
Denise Imoudu made her debut in the Bundesliga at the age of 16 and played eleven seasons at six locations.
She also studied health management and completed additional training in coaching.
Her boyfriend runs a physiotherapy practice in Potsdam that she can join.
As a setter, she had it in her hands to shape the way her team played - but only on the 81 square meters of half a volleyball court.
And as a volleyball player, Denise Imoudu made a good living from her skill.
But only for the moment, not for the time afterwards.
It speaks for her clear attitude, which may also be a sign of a self-confident generation of young women, that she discussed her plan to quit early and in a spirit of trust with Felix Koslowski, her club coach and long-time national coach.
Koslowski could not and would not change her mind.
Because he can understand that the multi-talented and interested person does not want to reduce her life to the ultimately unpredictable flight of a ball in the long term.
After SSC Schwerin failed in the semi-finals of the play-offs this year at MTV Stuttgart, who is now contesting the final series against SC Potsdam, Denise Imoudu ends her career without a single German championship title.
An unfinished career?
She's completely at peace with herself, she says.
Rightly so.