Without a senior on its roster, the NIU men’s golf team relied on leadership from its juniors during its fall season, which ended Tuesday.

Nicholas Schenk, along with Dan Gratton and Ethan Roush have been those juniors.

“I definitely need to step up,” said Schenk, about the second half of their year. “Us three [juniors] need to step forward to make sure that we stay consistent.”

Schenk once again led the Huskies in their final tournament of the fall, the Southwest Missouri State Invitational on Monday and Tuesday.

The Huskies finished in third place out of 12 teams, which equaled their best finish of the year. NIU also finished third in the Fairway Club Invitational at Lincoln, Neb.

“It’s been a pretty good season considering we’ve been playing [with] two freshmen most of the season and we have no seniors,” NIU coach John Cleary said.

Schenk tied for fifth with a six-over par-222 for NIU.

After their strong start at the Fairway Club Invitational, the Huskies began to struggle.

They finished fifth out of nine teams at the Iowa Invitational but rebounded in the Earl Yestingsmeier Invitational with a fourth-place finish.

“We showed a little bit more consistency as the season went on with better showings top to bottom,” Cleary said. “We are showing signs of being a good team for the spring, which is the bulk of the season.”

They also finished ninth out of 13 teams in the Northern Intercollegiate tournament. The Huskies found themselves in a tie for fourth place after the first round, but a shaky second round dropped them to ninth place overall.

“We always had one not-so-good round that doesn’t allow us to win,” Schenk said. “We know what we have to train with for the spring and we’re going to take that with us.”

The spring slate will start March 18 and 19 in Hawaii when the Huskies compete in the Kauai Collegiate Cup.