From MAC doormat to this season’s top 25 ranking, Steve Goletz of the men’s soccer team has run the gamut as a Huskie.

Call it destiny, fate, luck or fortune, but Goletz took the men’s soccer team from a 4-13-1 record in 2002 to an 11-6-2 mark and a No. 22 national ranking in 2005.

This has landed Goletz No. 4 on the Northern Star’s athlete of the year list.

“It’s been great to see things evolve,” Goletz said. “It’s good to know that when I come back [to visit], our group turned things around.”

Twelve games into last season, NIU was 8-2-2 and ranked No. 22, marking the first time it received national attention since 1991.

At the time, the goalkeeper was ranked No. 4 in the NCAA with a .892 save percentage — 33 saves. NIU’s only losses came when Goletz was out with a concussion.

“We were on such an emotional high,” Goletz said. “Personally, I was playing with the most confidence I had in four years.”

The team’s next two losses came at the hands of No. 25 Wisconsin-Milwaukee and No. 1 Akron.

Regardless, the Huskies received a first round bye in the MAC tournament. The teameventually lost to Buffalo, a team NIU beat during the regular season.

“We were disappointed in the ending,” said NIU coach Steve Simmons. “But this is a part of the big picture of building a program.”

Goletz finished with a .81 goals-against-average, 53 saves and had seven-straight shutouts from Sept. 21 to Oct. 14.

Though the Downers Grove native received a medical redshirt after breaking his hand two games into his sophomore year, he will not return for a fifth season next fall.

Instead, Goletz will be student teaching at Naperville North in the physical education and health departments.

“Next year we won’t expect anything less from our core of goalkeepers than we did from Steve,” Simmons said.