Back in August, NIU volleyball coach Todd Kress walked around Chick Evans Field House and had the feeling the Huskies were going to walk away with the MAC championship.

And when junior outside hitter Jen VonderHaar came down with a monstrous kill to win Game 3 over No. 3 seed Ball State Saturday, the Huskies fulfilled Kress’s goal of winning the MAC championship, capping off a successful season that saw NIU through an 18-match winning streak.

The Huskies won the tournament with great ease, defeating Toledo, Miami and Ball State in three games.

“I thought we came out and played three solid matches and we won all three in three,” Kress said. “That surprises me.”

VonderHaar knew the Huskies would dominate the way they did.

“We expect to come out and win every match,” said the junior outside hitter. “If we continue to play the way we did tonight, there will be no one stopping us.”

The last time the Huskies won a conference championship was in 1997, when they defeated Miami in three games. With the victory over Ball State, NIU has an automatic berth into the NCAA tournament, which begins Thursday. The Huskies will find out today who they will be facing in the first round when the NCAA releases the seedings for the 64-team tournament.

Going into the season, the coaches of the MAC did not expect much from the Huskies. Not one coach gave NIU a vote to win the MAC regular season title or the tournament championship. In fact, the coaches voted NIU third in the MAC West, behind favorites Western Michigan and Ball State. NIU’s coaching staff put a reminder of the votes up in front of the Huskies’ lockers before the match against the Cardinals Saturday.

Sophomore Brooke Dodson said she would love to line up all the coaches in the MAC and tell them this championship was for them.

“I know that is a little in-your-face,” Dodson said. “But we didn’t get any respect from any of the teams. I think that everyone’s eyes are huge right now because they didn’t think NIU could do this. We are all excited because we knew we could do this. There was no doubt in our minds.”

While making things look easy in the MAC tournament, the Huskies were not as successful in the early part of the season, which they started with a 3-4 overall record, losing their first two matches of the MAC schedule to Eastern Michigan and Ball State — both of which were on the road.

But at the Miami match on Sept. 22, the Huskies started to turn things around.

“When we started to struggle right out of the game, it kind of surprised me,” said the third-year coach. “We were doing different things with the lineup and tinkering with things here and there. Finally, we hit our stride in the Miami match. We decided to stick with the lineup we had. We were going to sink or swim.”

And the Huskies went on a tear after that.

After defeating the Red Hawks in a five-game marathon, the Huskies went on a school record 18-match winning streak, defeating every MAC team, Iowa, Illinois State and the University of Illinois-Chicago. The Huskies saw their winning streak snapped against Western Michigan in the season finale.

Kress said even though it is tough to compare this championship with the last time he won a championship with Fairfield, he knows there are glaring differences in the two programs.

“Back then we were building a program,” he said. “Here we were trying to revive a program. This is more satisfying because of the fact that I am happy with the level that we are at. We have an opportunity to do some damage in the NCAA tournament. Our challenge is to play at that level that we did today.

“At Fairfield, we were just happy to be there to be the representative of the Metro-Atlantic Athletic Conference. Now, we are not going to be happy just to be there. We are there to win. We want to go in and make a statement.”