George Ferguson Column: Skylights enter Frontier season battle tested

The Montana State University-Northern volleyball team just went through about as tough of a five-week stretch as any team in the NAIA.

Sure, only three of those works were where actual matches were involved. But before that, the Skylights spent two weeks in training camp, running, drilling, playing and lifting, just to get ready for those first three weeks of competition.

And when the competition finally came, it came in the form of some of the best and brightest teams in all of NAIA volleyball.

With mostly a brand new team, only three returning starters and exactly no seniors, the Skylights set out to play eight teams ranked in the NAIA Preseason Coaches Poll between late August and last weekend in Helena. The schedule included No. 14 Eastern Oregon in Spokane, a flight to Bellevue, Nebraska to square off against now No. 5 Northwestern of Iowa, now No. 9 Midland, now No. 10 Grand View and now No. 23 Dordt College. If that weekend wasn't enough, MSU-N drove to Helena last weekend to face defending national champion Texas-Brownsville, then No. 2 Concordia-Irvine and now No. 6 Biola of California.

There's no way anyone can show me a more difficult schedule, and while some might think sixth-year head coach Bill Huebsch was crazy for doing it, he certainly had a plan.

"There's a method to the madness," Huebsch said recently. "We scheduled like this because we wanted these kids to experience playing teams that are already on the level we aspire to be on. But we also hoped it would toughen this team up some. Playing the caliber of teams we have this first three weeks, our league, which is very good, maybe it won't look so tough night in and night out."

Huebsch certainly accomplished the first mission. Frontier Conference play hasn't even begun yet, and already a young Skylight squad has gone toe-to-toe with some of the elite programs and players in the NAIA. And he says he's seen plenty of improvement along the way.

The second part of the mission remains to be seen. But it's finally time to find out.

Northern, which is the defending Frontier regular season champion, opens Frontier play Thursday night against arch rival Lewis-Clark State in Lewiston, Idaho. MSU-N wraps up its first road trip of the season Saturday in Butte.

And the Skylights will find out just what they're made of, and what life back in the Frontier is going to be like, right away. Because after this weekend's road trip, Northern makes its long-awaited home debut Sept. 19 against new No. 1-ranked Rocky Mountain College. The following day, MSU-N hosts arch rival Carroll College. So in the first two weeks of league play, the Skylights will play four of the teams picked to finish in the top five in the league this season. Tech was picked to finish fifth, while Northern was selected third.

And that's what the daunting preseason schedule was for. That's exactly why Northern went out on the road, for three weeks in a row, and played the teams it played. Huebsch wanted his team battle-tested and there's no doubt the Skylights are. There's no way they couldn't be.

Northern has challenged itself in ways many teams haven't. Sure, other Frontier schools went out and played tough teams, too. In fact, RMC is No. 1 because it knocked off both Brownsville and Concordia last weekend in Helena. But many teams also pepper their schedule with cupcake matches, with sure-fire victories to pad its overall record heading into league play. That's the nature of scheduling sometime. But Huebsch and the Skylights didn't do that.

Instead, Northern went in the opposite direction and went out and played the best possible teams it could. That says a lot about what Huebsch's goals are with his program. It shows he, and the current Skylight roster aren't resting on the success of the magical 2013 season.

No one, including Huebsch expects the new Skylights to be like the old ones. Actually, it's a point of emphasis for the 2014 Skylights not to look back, not to be satisfied with the heights the program has reached under Huebsch. Instead, this Skylight squad is hungry, in fact starved for its own success. This Skylight team wants to write its own chapter in the Northern volleyball history book. This Skylight team wants its own legacy.

And while doing it won't be easy, as Northern is still learning, still gelling and still figuring out what kind of team it is this season, the fact that the Skylights went and challenged themselves so vigorously over the last three weeks, is certainly a testament to what the program has become, what Huebsch has built at Northern, and what type of team the Skylights aspire to be this season.

No, Northern didn't win many of those matches the last three weeks, but now that Frontier play is finally here, that's not the point anymore. The point is, Northern played those matches and it will soon become clear, the Skylights will be better for it.

So get ready. It's Frontier volleyball time, and just like the last few years have been at Northern, this one is going to be a lot of fun.