The season began with a 1-3 start.

Senior captain Andy Champion of the NIU men’s soccer team said he thought it was going to be the same thing as the last three years all over again.

Champion had suffered through the past three seasons, where NIU won 11 of 52 games. The worst was 2003, when NIU went 3-13-1 in NIU coach Steve Simmons’ first season.

Coming into the 2004 season, the Huskies had lost 13 straight road games dating back to 2002.

NIU snapped that streak against Wright State, of all teams. WSU beat NIU 3-2 last year in overtime in what Simmons called an emotional loss for the Huskies.

The odds were stacked against NIU as they lost starting goalkeeper Steve Goletz to a fracture in his right hand in the game prior to WSU. Goletz had already missed all of last season with a leg injury.

However, junior transfer Brent Hartman stepped in for Goletz and the Huskies didn’t lose a beat, defeating WSU 2-1.

“The Wright State win was huge after another emotional loss on the road,” Simmons said. “It was a sign of things to come for our team.”

That it was, as the Huskies rolled off wins in 10 of their next 11 games. The only loss came Oct. 3 in a 3-1 setback to Marshall.

“We had just beat Wisconsin,” Simmons said. “We just didn’t bring it against Marshall.”

NIU bounced back the following weekend, first by taking Bowling Green 6-3 at home.

Freshmen Fraser Gibson, Curt Zastrow and Cody Russell combined to score five of the goals. Zastrow and Gibson went on to lead the team this year with eight and five goals, respectively.

“The big difference in scoring this year was that we were able to finish,” junior Tony Deldin said. “The freshmen we recruited were a big reason for that.”

But Gibson would be the one to come up big in the next game against Kentucky – which only competes in the MAC for men’s soccer.

Eight minutes into its game against UK, Gibson scored unassisted and the Huskies held off UK the rest of the way to take sole possession of first place.

It was only UK’s third home conference loss since joining the MAC in 1995.

The Huskies split their next two games and were set to play Akron for the MAC regular season championship.

However, it was not meant to be for NIU, as it lost 2-1 at home on Oct. 24.

“They were a quality team and we were in it,” Champion said. “But we didn’t get that final goal.”

The Huskies won their last regular-season game against DePaul and received the No. 3 seed for the MAC tournament.

NIU hadn’t advanced past the first round of the tournament since 1999. The team finished second to Marshall that year.

On Friday, NIU played Buffalo, a team it beat 3-0 on Oct. 17. But the Huskies faltered for the fifth year in a row, losing 2-1 and finishing with a mark of 12-7.

“In 2003 we were losing, but we knew we were close,” Simmons said. “This year, the guys invested in themselves in the off-season. Of anything, I was pleased that we were in that position to win and playing at the end of October.”