That's a wrap on 2018-19 Huskie fans!

With triple-jumper Jehvania Whyte adding to her legacy as NIU's most decorated track and field student-athlete in recent history last weekend, we can now officially close the book on the Huskie academic AND athletic seasons.

Jehvania's Top 20 finish marked the third consecutive season NIU was represented at the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships and capped a strong finish to the spring for Huskie Athletics.

After being picked ninth in the Mid-American Conference preseason poll, NIU Baseball not only earned the No. 5 seed in the MAC Tournament, the Huskies won a pair of games in Avon, Ohio. In the end, the Huskies were one of the last three teams standing, before falling in extra innings to narrowly miss a spot in the league title game.

At the MAC Softball Tournament in Akron, NIU picked up its 27^th win of the season before bowing out on day three of the four-day event. The Huskies won at least one game in the MAC Tournament for the fourth straight season and saw six players, including four underclassmen, earn MAC postseason honors. Freshman Katie Keller went one better as she became the first NIU freshman to be named first team All-Region, while senior Jenny Van Geertry, a first team All-MAC choice, was also named a third-team Academic All-American.

Van Geertry's selection gave the Huskies three Google Cloud Academic All-Americans in three different sports this year, the first time that has happened in 19 years! Van Geertry joined fellow NIU graduates Max Scharping (football, 1^st team) and Mikayla Voigt (women's basketball, 2^nd team) as 2018-19 Academic All-Americans. They led the way to another banner year academically for the Huskies. At the end of the spring semester, NIU student-athletes had a cumulative GPA of 3.20 with 14 of 16 teams above a 3.0. During the year, we had 112 students named Academic All-MAC (freshmen and newcomers are not eligible), 77 graduate and this spring, a total of 240 student-athletes posted a GPA of 3.0 or higher.

Academic awards and achievements like these, combined with measurement tools like the APR (Academic Progress Rate) and GSR (Graduation Success Rate) continue to put Huskie Athletics at an elite level in terms of academic success.

Last week, we added an element that will help Huskie student-athletes perform at an elite level when it comes to sports performance with the dedication of the Northwestern Medicine Sports Performance Center and the Phi Sigma Kappa Alumni Association of NIU Nutrition Center.      

The Northwestern Medicine Performance Center addresses three aspects of student-athlete welfare – physical improvements to the NIU strength and conditioning area in the Yordon Center, the addition of the Phi Sigma Kappa Alumni Association of NIU Nutrition Center in the Barsema Hall of Champions which will address nutritional needs of all Huskie student-athletes, and an increased emphasis and programming in the area of mental health. All three are critical to the development of our young people!

Thanks to our naming partners in this effort – Northwestern Medicine and the Phi Sigma Kappa Alumni Association of NIU – the NIU College of Health and Human Sciences, which will assist in programming and staffing and many additional donors, including a number of former Huskie student-athletes. Through all of your efforts and generosity, the Northwestern Medicine Performance Center and Phi Sigma Kappa Alumni Association of NIU Nutrition Center will make a great impact on current and future Huskies!

Watch the video highlights, see the photo gallery and read the full release on the dedication here (link).

The improvements to the strength and conditioning area in the Yordon Center, as well as the opening of the Phi Sigma Kappa Alumni Association of NIU Nutrition Center came just in time for us to welcome the first of our 2019-20 student-athletes back to campus for the summer. Football's returning players and transfers, as well as the women's basketball team, is here with men's basketball and volleyball soon to follow. 

Summer school starts next week and as our staff gears up for another great year of Huskie Athletics, I want to send out a special appreciation specifically to the staff. While coaches are often recognized, the many people that work behind the scenes to make our events run and to service our student-athletes are rarely noticed.

I am especially appreciative because based on a number of challenging circumstances, including budget reductions, we've had to maintain operations for a consistent number of student-athletes with fewer staff members. Several people have asked about our staffing and student-athlete numbers during the course of the year! As you can see by the chart, at the end of 2014, there were 234 total employees working in NIU Athletics. Today, there are 185; in total, we have seen a 21 percent reduction in our work force.
                                                         
In contrast to that, as you can see by the second graph, our student-athlete population has not dropped. Our Fall Semester student-athlete population has averaged 396 students for the last six years, with a high of 404. Of course, we graduate students each December, accounting for the lower numbers in the spring semesters. 


While we have established partnerships throughout campus and our community to help us fill the gaps with students, volunteers and interns, the absence of trained professionals is a significant challenge for us, and another reason why your support is so critical to our department. Believe me, EVERY donation – especially those designated as unrestricted – helps NIU Athletics and helps us better serve our fans and all NIU student-athletes.

Of course, we never take our season ticket members for granted, we just need more of you to Join the Pack! I hope you have your tickets for the 2019 Huskie Football season as the energy new head coach Thomas Hammock and his staff have created is contagious! We're seeing it in our current players, in the incoming group, on the recruiting trail and among our loyal fans, as last week's Huskie Summer Circuit set attendance records at all three stops with a 105% increase in attendance.

Don't forget those volleyball season tickets as the Huskies open 2019 with a home tournament the same weekend as the football season opener. Volleyball at 1 pm in Victor E. Court and football at 6 p.m. versus Illinois State in Huskie Stadium with a little tailgating in between? Sounds like a perfect August 31^st to me!

Hope to see all of you there! Have a great summer and Go Huskies!  
 

Sean T. Frazier
Associate Vice-President & Director of Athletics