Marie Zidek walked off the volleyball court for the last time Nov. 18, 2005. The senior setter put an end to her career at NIU with a MAC tournament loss to No. 1 seed Ohio. As a Huskie, Zidek recorded more than 1,100 assists, putting her sixth in the NIU record books.

The Northern Star caught up with the senior to ask about her continuing involvement in athletics, weird sleep cycle and adventures in the wilderness.

Northern Star: You’re part of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. What exactly is SAAC?

Marie Zidek: The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee is like a student-athlete union.

It has three goals that it tries to achieve. One is trying to get athletes within other sports to know each other better. The second is trying to bridge the gap between the students of NIU and the athletes, and our third goal is to get athletes and the community to be involved together.

NS: Does SAAC do anything else?

MZ: We’re also the eyes and ears for athletes. We’re the bridge that helps to provide effective communication between the athletic department and the athletes. We’re a nationally recognized committee and have a conference and national levels of the committee. Me and Chris VanDuerm from men’s soccer sit in on the conference Student Advancement Committee. We vote on NCAA regulations and rules. He and I just went to a conference a couple weeks ago on sportsmanship.

NS: That’s a lot, do you have time to do anything else?

MZ: I work at the Outing Center. I also partake in a few other organizations on campus and try to do some research on the side. I’m always keeping myself busy.

NS: So basically, you don’t sleep.

MZ: Not really. I enjoy watching sunrises a lot. Sometimes I don’t get to close my eyes between sunset to sunrise, but I get enough sleep to stay healthy.

NS: I heard the volleyball team is doing a bags tournament. What’s that all about?

MZ: The tournament is to help our team to raise money for a trip to Europe. We are going over Spring Break, and the tournament is to help defray the cost. If you think you’re good at bags, you’ll have to come out and bag it up at this tourney.

NS: So is the whole team heading over to Europe?

MZ: The whole team is going, minus the graduating seniors, which includes me. That includes all the coaching staff and athletic trainers.

NS: Did you get to go on any of these trips in the past?

MZ: No, this is a new thing for the team. It should go well, though we’ll see what happens.

NS: So what do you do at the Outing Centre?

MZ: We do trips to the outdoors here. I’m a trip leader, so I take a range of people who have not experienced the outdoors to people who have been out a lot. I’ve been on trips to Utah, the Everglades and Wisconsin. We do rock climbing, camping and a lot of other stuff outdoors. I make sure people are safe and have a good time while on the trips. It’s really cool.

NS: Do you have a favorite memory for one of these trips?

MZ: Definitely. It was when we were in Utah a year and a half ago. We were halfway through a [backpacking] trip and were having a trip leader meeting. We were having the meeting on top of a boulder that we had to climb up to get to. We had just gotten out of the canyon for the first time, and the sun was just beginning to set. There was nothing there but this grassy field, the red rocks and the sun. The atmosphere was all lit up, it was beautiful. I’ll never forget that moment.