Another women’s volleyball season came to an end. Not exactly earth-shattering news, unless 13-game winning streaks and conference championships count for something.

For a team that started the season with a new coaching staff, NIU’s 22-8 record is pretty remarkable. In fact, the 1988 Huskies’ .733 winning percentage is the highest in the history of NIU women’s volleyball.

“I had the confidence in them that they would become a good team,” said head coach Pete Waite. “But they impressed me with how soon they decided they wanted to be there.”

After winning the first two games of the season, things seemed to be falling right into place. But two weeks later, the team stood at 6-3 before dropping five of its next eight games to fall even further to 9-8.

“Earlier in the season, (we) would play down to a team’s level even though we were the more talented team,” Waite said. “So, by mid-season, we had learned how to turn on the intensity when it was time to play.”

A Sept. 23 road win over Western Illinois (the first road victory of the season) was indicative of the squad’s growth over the early part of the season.

“There were certain matches that gave us a hint of what was to come by the end of the year,” Waite said. “In our win over Western Illinois in three games, everyone really came together for the match. There was total communication on the court and full intensity, which was exactly what we were looking for.”

Six games later, the North Star Conference season beckoned, and the Huskies answered with a subpar performance and a four-game loss to Illinois-Chicago.

“At that point, we were still struggling to find ourselves as a team,” Waite said. “It seemed like every other match we would come out and play a hard match and struggle the next match. So, we were looking for consistency at that point.”

And they found it in a big way. Beginning with an Oct. 21 home win over Akron, the Huskies didn’t lose a match the rest of the season.

“That’s really when the team started to take the things that we were working on in practice and trust the staff that these things would work,” Waite said. “The most impressive change took place in their minds and their attitudes. It was a gradual change until they finally put everything together in the conference tournament.”

The tournament was especially pleasing to the Huskies because it gave them a chance to avenge the earlier loss to UIC. But the three-game thrashing NIU administered to the Flames in the title match was proof of how far the Huskies had come in just a short period of time.

“By the time the finals started, they had become a team that could control the court and nobody was going to stop them,” Waite said. “We lost the first game to DePaul and never lost a game the rest of the tournament which really proves how much we improved from losing to Illinois-Chicago in four (games) to just creaming them in three in the finals of the tournament.

“It’s a great feeling to come in and win the conference. That was the team goal and my goal from the first day of practice. The best part about it was that we were a team that began as an average group and became a real high-caliber volleyball team.”