As the NIU men’s and women’s soccer seasons get underway, the teams will be without some familiar faces.

The Northern Star’s Andrew Singer and Mike Buda take center ice to see who will be the Huskies’ bigger loss: Lindsey Curnock or Josh Karsten.

Andrew Singer: Obviously, both of these players were huge for their respective clubs. However, with all due respect Josh Karsten, it is no question that Lindsey Curnock is the bigger loss for her team. If for no other reason, she was the immovable rock between the pipes for four long years.

Mike Buda: Curnock may have been the immovable rock in goal, but Karsten helped hold opponents to a 7.2 shot percentage inside a defense that allowed 15 goals in 19 games. He was the leader of the backfield and will be leaving a large hole to fill.

AS: No doubt, but the kind of goaltending that Curnock gave her team was beyond impressive and will prove extremely difficult for her team to replace. Her career .945 goals against average speaks for itself.

MB: I give it to you that Curnock gets it done in the net, but Karsten aided his backs in getting some great blocked shots, a statistic that never gets rewarded on the box score, and was also able to push forward on many occasions and bury one into the back of the net. He finished 2009 with five goals and one assist which gave him the fourth best total in points and he also notched two game winners. The rest of NIU’s defense last season finished with a combined three goals and three assists.

AS: Shot blocking is indeed a practice that nets no glory, but Curnock set a MAC record with 29 shutouts over the course of her career. That’s a stat that deserves some glory. Not to mention the fact that Curnock produced some of her best stats while enduring a coaching change between the 2007 and 2008 seasons.

MB: Glory is the name of the game and Karsten was part of a team in 2006 that won the MAC title and played a few games in the NCAA Tournament. He didn’t do it all himself, but he was a key member of that team as a youngster. And not all of Curnock’s shutouts can just be credited to her. If she were giving an acceptance speech, just like at the Academy Awards, she would be thanking all the little people because she couldn’t have done it all herself.

AS: That’s the truth. After all the individual stats are out of the way, team accomplishments mean more than anything. So, you got me on that front, because Karsten’s tenure at NIU included a MAC Championship while the closest Curnock came to a title was in 2008 when the team was exiled in the first round of the MAC tourney. I think we can both agree though that these players have left holes in their teams, and it will be awhile before either coach can state with any conviction that they’ve replaced them.