Two NIU women gymnasts will be leaving a lifetime of gymnastics behind them when they board the plane for Auburn, Ala., Thursday. The NCAA Central Regional Championships Saturday at Auburn University is the last time seniors Martha Unger and Laurie Vitallo...

Spring: The time when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of ... baseball. Until recently, if you were a baseball fan at NIU you had to make do with televised Cubs and Sox games. But last year, the powers-that-be at NIU decided to drop the men's gymnastics...

When Greg O'Neil started playing in tennis tournaments at age 12, he got "trounced." O'Neil began to play tennis at a relatively old age (in tennis standards) of 11. "My parents saw tennis on TV, and they liked it," he said. "It's something they wanted...

Lisa Foss isn't the only member of the NIU women's basketball team to try out for the Olympic team. NIU's assistant coach Kamie Ethridge, former University of Texas standout, tried out and competed on the 1988 Olympic gold-medal winning women's basketball...

When the career light turns green for the four NIU women's basketball seniors in May, expect them to cruise right into a sports-oriented future. Denise Dove, Lisa Foss, Denise Lipnisky and Toby Meeks all envision some sort of sports-related occupation...

Going winless in 16 tries would be enough to make anyone want to give up hope, but for NIU's baseball squad, giving up is the last thing in mind. Coming into this season, the players and fans alike knew it would be rough going. This was because the team...

In the world of women's gymnastics, earning respect and notoriety takes more than NIU's No. 15 national team ranking and a 22-1 record. The principle is simple: Having one great season is good for the team. Having consistently great seasons is good for...

NIU's baseball team had thought its Monday home-opening doubleheader against the Chicago State Cougars would feature its first victory in 1991. The victory-deprived Huskies had thought that because they played the Cougars so competitively in a March 21...

Even with the NIU baseball team's record at 0-14, the last thing the Huskies' head coach Joe "Spanky" McFarland has to worry about is his players' confidence level heading into Monday's doubleheader home opener against Chicago State. "I know we can definitely...

The more things change, the more they ... well, you know the rest of that axiom, and by now, so must the NIU baseball team. As days become weeks, the Huskies' dubious, season-long winless streak continues to grow and rankle. Last weekend, the Huskies...

If the NIU softball team plans to return to the Lady Redbird Classic next year, the players will have a much different philosophy: losing is everything. It seemed that losing gave the Huskies a winning advantage, citing their second-place trophy for a...

In the 1990s Land of the Giants with aircraft carriers in the paint and seven-foot lottery draft picks on the wing, NIU's scrappy 5-10, 150-pound senior guard Donald Whiteside always elbowed the big boys for equal time. You know, crusades for "short people."...