Moving from the David S. Mack Fitness Center, the Pride played their first match of the season at the Physical Education Center on Thursday, against a formidable opponent, Towson University. Hofstra won three sets to one, remaining unbeaten at home.
The biggest headline of the night was Veronika Kostova, reaching 1,000 kills for her career here at Hofstra. She is just the 15th player in school history to have achieved this milestone and ended the night with 15 kills for the match.

“I am so happy to see that Veronika played a good match tonight getting her momentum back; we’ve been waiting for that. It’s a special night and she played well which makes the 1,000 kill accomplishment even better,” said head coach, Emily Mansur.

The Tigers took what was a hard fought first set. However, the Pride came roaring back to win another hard fought second set and ran away with the third and fourth.

Within the third set, there was some miscommunication amongst the referees, and they had a nearly 25 minute long discussion about whether Towson hit the ball four times, rather than three before sending it over the net. During this time, the Pride kept themselves loose and pumped up on the court.

After the grueling delay finally came to an end, Hofstra seemed to have all the momentum from there on out as they easily finished off that set and the one to follow.

“They really got fired up which is great because that [delay] can go two ways and they took the best way out of that and they had a great set so I was really happy with how we responded to that break,” Coach Mansur said.

With a busy weekend ahead of them, the Pride look to tack onto their three game winning streak and continue climbing up the CAA standings on Saturday at 1 p.m., again at home, against the University of Delaware. They play again Sunday at 1 p.m. at Hofstra, against Elon University.