By Kyle Kandetzki – Assistant Sports Editor
The Pride is already back on the fairways and before you know it, their fall season will be over. Hofstra men’s and women’s golf kicked off their 2014-15 campaigns in Connecticut and Maryland, respectively, this past weekend. The Pride will participate in a handful of tournaments before packing it in for the winter in just over a month’s time.
On the women’s side, Hofstra will only be taking part in four regular season tournaments before any postseason action and the winter break. Following the Tiganelli Towson Invitational, the opening event of the season, the Pride placed 14th out of 15 teams.
The remaining schedule includes events at Navy in Annapolis, Md., against St. John’s in East Meadow, and versus Rutgers in New Jersey. Their final invitational takes place on October 10th and 11th and the season usually restarts midway through March.
The Pride features a very young squad, with just one senior, four sophomores, and two freshmen. Their elder member, Shannon Chadha, only played in one event last year, but she is a three time CAA Commissioner’s Academic Award winner.
Other notable players on the roster include sophomore Andrea Neilson, who was the top player for the Pride in their opening event, coming in 36th overall. Freshman Amanda Bigger turned in a 47th place finish in her debut for the Pride, she is coming to Hofstra with experience in golf since middle school.
Sophomores Jai Ghuman and Jacquie Faldetta had the strongest performances for Hofstra to round off the 2013-14 in the CAA tournament, and are among the group of players to watch as well.
The women’s golf squad will need to rebuild this season due to a relatively inexperienced team, as well as less than satisfactory finishes the past season – finishing in the bottom half in all invitational in 2013-14.
On the men’s front, a positive opening event has the Pride striving for more success in 2014-15. Hofstra came out of the Blue Devil Invitational hosted by Central Connecticut State University in second place out of a dozen competing schools.
Hofstra is looking at seven events to make up their fall season of competitions, including new additions to the schedule like The Doc Gimmler in Farmingdale, N.Y., the Tuxedo Autumn Invitational in Tuxedo, N.Y. and the Jasper Shootout in Huntington, N.Y.
The three-round Doc Gimmler is their next event, which will be played this Friday and Saturday,
The Pride was able to place in the top half in seven of 12 events they competed in last season, including a victory in the Manhattan Quad Meet in October. The team can’t be satisfied after a last place finish on the CAA tournament to close out their previous season.
Unlike the women’s squad, the men have a very experienced team with four seniors to go along with three sophomores. Senior Brandon Shin made himself out to be the player to watch this Monday, turning in a one under par in the final round to give him sixth place overall.
Fellow senior David Mecca also had an impressive outing, shooting seven-over for the event, tied with sophomore David Won for the second best score by a Pride player, and 14th overall.
Hofstra should certainly be excited following a good start against out-of-conference opponents, but the main focus has to be on revenge against their CAA opponents after last year’s finish.
