The gymnastics team has a long road ahead on its way to the MAC Championship.

The Huskies enter this season pointed in the right direction, and NIU is seemingly more prepared for the start of competition than it was at the same time last year.

Central Michigan and Kent State, last season’s MAC representatives to the NCAA tournament, present the toughest opponents for the Huskies.

NIU will need to be able to beat both schools if it wants to have a shot at the MAC Championship. If the Huskies are able to reach their goal of scoring 195 per meet, senior Kim Gotlund believes getting there shouldn’t be a problem.

“We have the potential [to be one of those top 25 teams],” Gotlund said. “We have some great freshmen that came in as well as some great returners. Our goal is to go undefeated all year, especially in the MAC. I think we have a really great chance this year. We want to be MAC champs. We’ve talked about it from the beginning.”

The Huskies face a difficult schedule. They’ll take on 14th-ranked Nebraska in the season opener and face nationally ranked teams in Central Michigan and Arizona State later on in the season.

Head coach Sam Morreale isn’t worried about how NIU will fare against its nationally ranked opponents, as he just wants the Huskies to come out ready to go in every meet.

“In our sport, we can only really worry about what we do on our side,” Morreale said. “It gives us a little more to shoot for. Starting at Nebraska, we have to come out ready to go. We can’t take the first meet to get used to competing and move on from there.”

NIU has one major concern heading into the season: performing away from home. The Huskies have struggled on the road the last few seasons, but there’s been an active attempt to fix this. Senior Megan Melendez thinks the Huskies are starting to figure out how to perform better on the road.

“You have to be most focused when you’re competing,” Melendez said. “I think we’ve done a lot more pressure assignments here in the gym. We play little pressure games to get ourselves in that mindset that something’s on the line and we’ve got to hit that routine.”

NIU’s freshmen are already starting to look less like newcomers and more like starters. Melendez believes the contributions of the new gymnasts will give the Huskies much-needed depth throughout the season.

“There’s a bunch of them that are game time players,” Melendez said. “Even though they might not be 100 percent consistent in the gym, they’re hitting in our intra-squads and when we do pressure sets in the gym. We’re expecting big things from them. This is a sport where there are so many injuries that happen so suddenly, and lucky for us that’s where our depth is going to be in our favor.”