Terrance Smith’s trip to NIU’s bowl game was a long time coming.

A 64-year-old Big Rock native, Smith is a long time NIU fan who has bought football season tickets since 1996.

Why would he buy season tickets to a team who was beginning a 23-game losing streak, you ask?

“It probably wasn’t logical,” he said with laughs. “I thought, ‘Hell, why not buy season tickets?’ Help support this program a little bit and you know they are going to turn this thing around and they have. Now we’ve tried to buy additional season tickets and can’t now.”

For the first time in school history, NIU has posted five consecutive winning seasons and has built up fan support that led the conference in home attendance this season.

Perhaps that is why it didn’t surprise senior safety Lionel Hickenbottom when he glanced up to the crowd at Spartan Stadium to notice over 3,000 Huskie supporters, including the NIU band.

“Actually when I looked into the crowd I realized we had a nice crowd,” Hickenbottom said. “Especially for coming out to California because driving it’s something like 48 hours. They really supported us like they do every game. Much love to the fans.”

Making the flight

Smith was one of about 50 Huskie fans who took an 8:45 a.m. plane ride to California on the day of the game.

The plane had Huskie decor everywhere from Cardinal sweatshirts to Huskie emblazoned hats and player jerseys.

“I’ve been a season ticket holder for 20 years,” said Dave Rasmussen, a 1984 NIU graduate, whose son was decked out in a No. 10 Josh Haldi jersey. “I came to cheer for the Huskies.”

At the end of the six-hour flight, the stewardess gave a ‘Go Huskies’ over the loud speaker as the plane touched down in California, which was greeted by a round of applause and cheering.

Program shows resilience

No matter the distance of NIU’s bowl game, Smith would’ve made the trip, he said.

While he did not graduate from NIU, three of his four kids did along with his wife, sister and brother-in-law.

“I just admire the job that [former NIU athletic director] Cary Groth and [NIU coach] Joe Novak have done,” Smith said. “This is just a tribute to the job those people have done. I enjoy what the team’s accomplished.”

The job the Huskies have done is not something that happened overnight, Novak said.

In his ninth year as NIU head coach, Novak points to his team’s commitment, in particular during the off season.“When our kids are up at 5:45 in the morning Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings for about a month and a half, the summer commitment is there,” Novak said. “Our whole football team stays on campus all summer and to make a commitment to something like that things get tough. “You get behind and things aren’t going well [during the season] but you’re not about to quit, you’ve put in too much. That’s the thing with our program; they will not quit.”

And neither have the Huskies’ fans – at least recently.

“At the end of the game there were about 40 people left in the stands,” Smith recalled about the 1996 season.

On Dec. 30, at the completion of NIU’s 34-21 win over Troy, all the Huskies’ fans stayed to cheer on their team’s victory.