With over a decade of experience bringing programs to the top, Northern Illinois' Steve Simmons has been recognized as one of the top coaches in collegiate men's soccer.

After guiding his team to the 2006 Mid-American Conference Championship, Simmons garnered the Great Lakes Region Coach of the Year Award from the National Soccer Coaches Association of America. The honor made him NIU's first finalist for the NSCAA Coach of the Year Award. He has also filled his shelf with Mid-American Conference hardware, having earned the MAC Gary V. Palmisano Coach of the Year Award twice (2004, 2006) in four years at NIU.

Simmons, who has coached 20 players to All-MAC honors, earned the 2006 awards after his team achieved the best season in Huskie men's soccer history. As NIU's first MAC Champions, the team finished the season with a school-record 15 wins, including a perfect 9-0-0 mark at home, and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Simmons' defense-first philosophy led to the unprecedented success of the 2006 campaign. Goalkeeper Joe Zimka set an NCAA Division I record by allowing 0.21 goals against per match, and the Huskies notched 14 shutouts, tied for the most in the country. Seven of those shutout performances came during an eight-match unbeaten streak in which NIU played No. 21 Notre Dame to a double-overtime tie, and defeated conference foes Bowling Green, IPFW, Western Michigan, and two-time defending MAC champion Akron.

The 15-win 2006 season saw the Huskies ranked as high as 19th on the NSCAA's Top-25, and capped an impressive three-year run in which the Huskies won 38 matches.

Eleven of those 38 wins came from the effort in 2005, a season full of highlights. Most notably, the Huskies rode a 736:31 shutout streak to a seven-match unbeaten run that peaked with a No. 22 national ranking.

Driven by conference victories over Bowling Green, Western Michigan, Buffalo and IPFW, Northern Illinois finished as the runner-up in the MAC for the second consecutive season in 2005. It was the first time the Huskies had finished in the top-two in their conference in consecutive seasons since 1989-90.

That 11-6-2 campaign was a solid encore to 2004's impressive 12-7-0 record, which was the nation's second-best turnaround for a Division I men's soccer program. The Huskies won eight more games in 2004 than the previous season, Simmons' first at NIU.

The foundation for Simmons' reconstruction efforts can be traced back to his first season. Faced with a program decimated by graduation and injuries, the Huskie coach utilized a line-up with six freshmen. The Huskies won three contests in 2003 -- including league wins over Marshall and Buffalo -- and ultimately endured nine single-goal setbacks among the 13 losses.

For Simmons' sophomore effort in 2004, the Huskies rose to second-place in the MAC regular-season standings at 4-2-0. The turnaround engineered by Simmons earned him the Huskies' first-ever Mid-American Conference Gary V. Palmisano Coach of the Year Award.

The second-year results were highlighted by a 1-0 victory over defending MAC champ and then-affiliate member Kentucky. The 2004 season also saw the MAC award Huskie Curt Zastrow with Freshman of the Year honors, and place five other NIU players on its All-MAC teams.

In 2005, Northern Illinois would boast of five league selections as Justin McGrane earned first-team status, and Paul Gabel. Steve Goletz, Jose Alvarado and Chris Rufa garnered second-team accolades, while in 2006 NIU garnered four more all-MAC honors.

Prior to coming to NIU, Simmons spent two seasons as associate coach for Oregon State University where he worked with defenders and goalkeepers under Beaver coach Dana Taylor. His teaching was evident in 2002 when OSU climbed to No. 18 in the national polls during a nine-week run in the top-25. With Simmons as co-pilot, Oregon State also earned its first trip to the NCAA College Cup as part of a 13-8-0 campaign that was highlighted by victories over No. 6-rated California and No. 12 Tulsa.

Simmons moved to OSU afer a succesful five-year stint as head men's and women's coach at Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore. He took over a men's program coming off a 1-15-0 campaign in 1995 and built the Wildcats into a successful Division III program. After an 8-11-0 debut in 1996 and a 7-12-1 mark in 1997, his team reached double digits in victories for the first time with a 10-10-0 record in 1998. But that was just the first step on the road to a 12-7-1 mark in 1999 before the ultimate destination -- a trip to the Division III Final Four. A loss to eventual champion Messiah College punctuated a 21-1-1 overall record.

Simmons began his coaching career as an assistant at Gonzaga University in 1994 and earned his first head coaching post the following summer at Division III Whitworth College (Spokane, Wash.). His 9-8-2 record that year earned him Northwest Conference Coach of the Year honors and led to his move to fellow Northwest Conference member Linfield. With the Wildcats, he gained his second NWC Coach of the Year plaque in 2000. Between Linfield and Whitworth, Simmons compiled a D-III head coaching record of 67-49-5 (.574).

As a collegian, Simmons earned First-Team All-America honors from the National Christian College Athletic Association as well as NAIA Academic All-America recognition as a senior at Concordia University-Portland. He was a two-time (1988, 1989) NAIA Northwest All-Region selection and gained Concordia's Male Athlete of the Year Award in 1990 before earning a spot on the school's Athletics Wall of Fame in 1993.

A graduate of Chugiak High School in Eagle River, Alaska, Simmons earned a Bachelor of Arts in business administration from Concordia in June, 1990. He earned a Master of Arts in physical education from Gonzaga in 1996.

Simmons is married to the former Maria Ballantyne of Salem, Ore. The couple has three children: sons Keagan, 10, and Jordan, 6, and daughter, Katey, 9.