By By Tim Robertson

To many, volleyball is considered the ultimate team game. All individual records and awards are because of the team and all personal achievements and accolades would be nothing without great assistant coaches and great players. Everyone relies on each other and without this camaraderie, there is no 600 career win, no 2004 Co-Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) Coach of the Year, no Hall of Fame inductions for Pride head coach Fran Kalafer.

Leading the Pride into the second half of conference play for the 25 consecutive year is Kalafer. She is leading her team toward what looks like another CAA conference birth and a possible championship, as the Pride is first in the CAA with an 8-1 record.

For Kalafer, the reasons for her success this year and in years past are the student-athletes that she brings in from across the country. Kalafer again deflects credit, saying the reason student-athletes come here is, “first and foremost it’s Hofstra-we have a terrific product to recruit with. We enjoy a great reputation academically and it is a great place to be.”

After 604 (and counting) career victories, Kalafer must be doing something right with her teams.

“I study, and I keep studying. The willingness to prepare for the next opponent,” she said. Constantly looking for tapes on her opponents and on her own team to study with, Kalafer has an assistant who videotapes and edits each of the Pride’s matches.

Besides working hard prior to the games, Kalafer believes that a coach should encourage and “help turn things around” when the team is not doing well. She is a believer in positive expectations. These are coaching attributes that are professed at coaching clinics throughout all levels, but rarely, and unfortunately not followed. Kalafer has followed these suggestions, and it has turned into a positive success story that is the Pride volleyball team.

There is a list on the wall of Kalafer’s cozy office of team goals not only for this season, but for every season. The first goal is to win the CAA tournament, because as the paper reads, “losing stinks.” Following are two goals in which Kalafer is serious about-to have a team grade point average of 3.3 and for the seniors to graduate, exemplifying the fact that Kalafer cares about the success of her team away from the net.

Being one of the more successful coaches that the University has, Kalafer understands the importance of appreciating what one has and sends the same message to her team.

“This is the cream of the crop, for them to realize what they have…sometimes its important to stop, look around and appreciate what you got,” she said.

One way Kalafer has taught appreciation to her student-athletes is by participating in the Light the Night Walk for leukemia and lymphoma. She also shows her unselfishness by giving the fighting spirit award to one of her players that shows the most fight throughout the season. According to the volleyball media guide, Kalafer will donate to the Leukemia Foundation in the name of one of her players that best exemplifies a “fighting spirit”.

Coach Kalafer (middle) reached her 600th career win this year. (Photo Courtesy of Athletic Dept.)