Last season the Hofstra University men’s lacrosse team finished 8-7 with a birth in the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) conference tournament for the first time since 2022. For Hofstra head Coach Seth Tierney, that wasn’t good enough.

“We don’t like the way we finished last season,” said Tierney. “We had a couple of close losses, in particular, two to Towson by less than two goals. I thought we had a good edge to us early on, but we need to learn to finish stronger.”

Last season Hofstra started the year 7-2 before dropping five of their last six games. Their only win came against a winless Hampton University 27-4.

Hofstra’s road back to CAA contention won’t be easy as Tierney scheduled a tough nonconference schedule. 

The Pride have split their opening two games, starting things off with a 14-7 win over Iona University, but falling 9-8 to Holy Cross University in double overtime. The nonconference slate isn’t getting any easier, with the Pride going on the road for a grudge match with Siena University.

Last season, the Saints tied for the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship and handled the Pride 17-11 on Valentine’s Day. The nonconference schedule also includes familiar foes Rutgers University and Yale University.

“We wanted to play a tough nonconference schedule,” Tierney said. “A Big Ten opponent in Rutgers, Siena tripped us up last year and we’ve had some spirited battles with Yale over the last few years.”

CAA play doesn’t get any easier. Hofstra opens conference play with a night game at Stony Brook University on March 13; a team the Pride needed double overtime to beat last season. The Pride then hosts Drexel University, who has won the last three meetings against Hofstra. They also travel to the back-to-back CAA conference champions in preseason No. 16 Towson University, who eliminated Hofstra in the semifinals of last year’s CAA tournament.

Hofstra will need to rely on their offense, which was the strength of last year’s squad. The Pride are top 15 in the country in goals per game, averaging just under 13 goals a game. They had the most explosive offense of any team that failed to make the NCAA tournament, with a lot of that success had to do with scoring diversity. 

Hofstra was the only Division I team in the country to have six or more scorers hit at least 35 points before the NCAA tournament. Colgate University was the only team that was close to that figure with five players. 

A lot of the offensive personnel are returning in 2026, including Anthony Mollica.

“The cat’s out of the bag about Anthony Mollica,” Tierney said. “Everyone in the conference knows who he is and he’s done a good job working on his game in the offseason.”

Also returning is CAA Rookie of the Year runner up Drew Bogardus. In his freshman campaign, Bogardus finished second in goals and points by a rookie. He scored the most points by a freshman since Ryan Tierney in 2017.

“[Bogardus] had a fantastic freshman campaign. He’s coming off of a few off-season injuries but we’re excited to see what he’s got back,” Tierney said.

Also returning to the Pride are Trey Parkes and Captain Trevor Natalie. Both players had breakout junior campaigns with 37 and 40 points, respectively. 

Hofstra lost two of their starting attackers from last season in John Madsen and Rory Jones to graduation. Jones and Madsen both finished their five-year careers with over 120 points. The Pride will look to depth players like Joey DeYoung, Anthony Laber and Lorenzo Varona to fill in for the missing production. 

“Building off of last year’s chemistry and experience is huge,” Mollica said. “Last year we had a newer team, so we took a little while to get going. This season we should get going right away.”

Mollica led the Pride in scoring with 50 points on 26 goals and 24 assists last season. He’s also taken on some additional responsibilities as one of the Pride’s captains this season.

“I’ve taken a more leadership role [this year],” Mollica said. “I’m join by Matt Vilas, Will Delaney, [Trevor] Natalie and Blake Cooling. They set the standard high and we’re just trying to reach it. Being a captain is awesome; it’s one of my greatest accomplishments ever.”

The Pride offense returns four of six starters, but their defense returns all three close defenders. Henry Troy, Austin Clarke and Delaney combined for 62 ground balls and 34 caused turnovers. Clarke earned a preseason All-CAA first team defender spot. These three with redshirt sophomore Shea Kennedy in net helped the Pride bring down their goals against average from 12.1 in 2024 to 10.1 in 2025.

“In regards to [Clarke, Delaney and Troy,] these are three guys back who logged a lot of minutes for us,” Tierney said. “We’re excited to see what they bring back.” 

According to Tierney, Cooling will continue to play at the long stick defensive midfielder position and be the number one option there. 

In goal, Kennedy redshirted in 2024 and became the fulltime starter in 2025. In his 15 appearances, Kennedy had a .551 save percentage and made 167 saves; Hofstra’s team save percentage rose from .456 to .558 with Kennedy in the net.

“Shea had a great season last year,” Tierney said. “He was a big part of keeping the ball out of the net.”

Tierney is also happy about the depth in the specialty positions.

“Early in the year, we want to share the miles on everyone’s tires,” Tierney said. “We’re deep at the short stick and long stick defensive midfield positions and we like to run two, three, even four different guys in there during the course of the game.”

Somewhere Hofstra must improve to become true CAA contenders is in the faceoff dot. The Pride were one of two CAA teams to finish below fifty percent on the draw last season. Ben Niesman graduated but the Pride retained senior Cole Meyers and sophomore Owen Bosak, who is back from injury.

Hofstra will try and right the wrongs of a cold second half of last season. The Pride dropped their final three conference games to Drexel, Fairfield and Towson, limping into the CAA tournament as the four seed. Their season ended in a tough overtime game against Towson. 

“We’re trying to build on last year and we’re happy with what happened then,” Tierney said. “We know we’ve got some new challenges. New teams on our schedule, new players on the roster. We’re trying to build on everything we did and we’re trying to take the next step.”

The Pride look to get their first conference title since 2008.