Not only has the NIU volleyball team been sweeping its opponents with great regularity on the court, but now it has chosen to carry that trend off the court as well.

With winning comes recognition, and the Huskies received a great deal of recognition Tuesday evening. They took home all three conference awards, becoming the first team in the conference to sweep all three honors.

Jenny Bowman took home the MAC Player of the Year, while Todd Kress was honored as Coach of the Year and Tera Lobdell continued NIU’s three-year reign by being named the Freshman of the Year.

The three were honored by their awards, but Kress knows that his hardware only came because of how well his players performed this season.

“I’m not really huge into coaching awards because you’re only as good as your kids are, and you’re only as good as your coaching staff,” said the third-year coach. “I think the Coach of the Year award is a direct reflection on how disciplined, how focused, how committed our kids are and how hard my assistant coaches work.”

Bowman, in her brief two-year career, already has taken home both conference awards, as she was named Freshman of the Year last season followed by her recent Player of the Year award.

The sophomore setter led the conference in assists with 13.75 a game, and was responsible for setting the passes to the No. 1 ranked hitting team in the MAC.

She became the first sophomore in league history to take home the Player of the Year, and she also was the first to win Tournament MVP, which she attained last weekend.

“I was really surprised,” Bowman said of winning the award. “I wasn’t expecting it; it’s very exciting. I think all of the awards we received were well deserving.”

Following teammates Jen VonderHaar and Bowman, Tera Lobdell put the finishing touches on this sweep by taking the Freshman of the Year honor.

She finished the season first on the team in kills, and ninth within the conference, tallying 3.47 per game. She also was tenth in the conference in hitting percentage with .290. Lobdell, like Bowman, also was excited about her honor.

“It’s a great award,” Lobdell said. “It shows that by winning it three years in a row, that Todd does a great job of recruiting, and by having won it three years in a row it shows we have three great players and hopefully we can keep winning in the years to come.”

Coach Kress takes that honor of being the first team to sweep as a compliment to the team and the year they’ve had.

“We’re very proud and very honored that we swept the awards because it has never happened before in the MAC,” said the newly crowned Coach of the Year. “We are very honored that the rest of the coaches in our conference put our program in that kind of light.”