NIU softball coach Donna Martin’s team has one objective in mind every season: to place first in the Mid-American Conference standings.

Year after year, the Huskies seem to find themselves at the top of the MAC. While her team lost four key players to graduation last spring, Martin doesn’t believe it should change this season.

“We’re the defending MAC champions,” she said. “We strive to do that every year. We may take a different path or road to get there, but that’s where we want to go every year.”

This spring, the Huskies return a strong defense and hitting game, led by senior Suzie Rizek. Rizek owns the NCAA record for home runs in a game, when she belted three in a contest against Miami University. The senior also tied the record for doubles in a contest when she tallied three in a game against Illinois State.

Last year, the Huskies decided to make improving their hitting a goal and established a school record for doubles with 72. The Huskies look to improve on that performance this year, with their top five hitters returning. NIU also smacked 191 hits, 15 triples and 7 home runs. But Martin said the area that will need the most work will be on the mound.

“Probably our least experienced right now is pitching,” Martin said. “With Courtney [Witvliet] being a senior, she’s going to be mainstay, but two, three and four after that are inexperienced. We’re going to have to nurse them along and give them some experience.”

Last year, Witvliet went 17-5 with a 1.10 ERA. But other than Witvliet, the rest of the NIU pitching staff will need to get as much experience if the Huskies hope to be ready for the MAC tournament. The Huskies lost their other top pitcher Christy Dalton to graduation.

But the Huskies have rookie talent in freshmen Anne Hamilton and Downers Grove South high school product Amy Krahula.

The Huskies fell short of their preseason expectations this weekend, going 0-5 during at the Auburn Invitational last weekend. The Huskies dropped tough losses to Purdue, Syracuse and the host Tigers.

“It was kind of a frustrating experience for us,” Martin said. “It’s early in the season, and we didn’t do as well as we expected and wanted to do. But we’ve found out some things that we’ve needed to know, and now we know them early enough [so] that we can fix them.”