Grit. Heart. Determination. The Hofstra Pride women’s soccer team has displayed all that and more under the helm of head coach Simon Riddiough. The 2021 season was a monumental one for the Pride, with Hofstra ranking No. 10 in the Top-25 poll – the highest ranking in program history.
Hofstra finished with an overall record of 17-4-1, winning their second straight Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) tournament championship and going over in a shutout victory in the first-round of the NCAA tournament. The Pride is looking forward to building off their recent success.
“It’s always a challenge, college is difficult,” said Riddiough. “We lost five or six extremely talented twenty-two, twenty-three-year-old players, and now we’re replacing them with eighteen, nineteen-year-old players, so it’s going to be a learning curve, hopefully not a steep curve.”
Coach Riddiough explains that he has a reasonable basis for his high hopes for the team.
“I do believe we have a talented group, but they’re going to have to learn pretty quickly and they’re going to have to learn the season is shorter, you have to take every opportunity to get victories as much as you can, and I do think this team’s trajectory could be better than the team which had graduated.”
Coach Riddiough has seen it all now that he’s entering his seventeenth season as head coach at Hofstra. Despite countless personnel changes, Riddiough has not had a losing season during his tenure. This season, the Pride has lost a big chunk of their roster from a year ago, with fourteen players exiting the program.
Fortunately for Riddiough and the rest of his coaching staff, they scored big time on the recruitment trail with eleven newcomers joining the roster, eight of which are international prospects. Riddiough understands what lies in front of him.
“We have a really large freshman class, which is exciting, but also an increase in workload,” Riddiough said. “We’ve got to get on the same page quickly, we’ve got the rules and all the other nitty gritty stuff organized, and it’s been a hectic preseason from that perspective.”
One face that will remain familiar to the Pride is star goalkeeper Skylar Kuzmich. With practically a brand-new roster heading into the season, Kuzmich knows the typical Hofstra style of play will change.
“Usually, we play a very direct game, we have our wing players flank the sides, cross it and get someone on the end of it, but with the players we have this year, we’re going to try and play with the ball a little more and try to create more passing patterns,” Kuzmich said.
Kuzmich had a sensational season last year, recording twelve solo shutouts and one combined shutout, setting not only a single-season program record with thirteen clean sheets but also finishing second in the nation in shutouts. She also recorded an impressive 0.58 goals against average, leading conference play.
“I contribute a lot of that success to our backline; it has to go through them before it gets to me,” Kuzmich said. “We had so many shutouts because they did such a great job. On a personal level, I just went into the season with a bit more confidence than usual. My freshman and sophomore year I was okay, probably mediocre, but I really felt like I needed to fill the position better, and if I have more confidence, my team will have more confidence in me as well. This season coming up, I’m just going to go in with the same headspace for our team.”
Another returning member is Anja Suttner, a senior who has become a defensive machine, being named CAA preseason defensive player of the year last season. Ellen Halseth is back for the Pride as well. Halseth recorded seven goals last season and was fourth on the team in points scored after scoring sixteen last season.
The work and improvement of Kuzmich has not gone unnoticed, with the coaching staff building confidence in the senior becoming a true leader of the team.
“Skylar has gone from strength to strength, each year she’s just become stronger and more confident as a goalkeeper and with that, her maturity has come along wonderfully,” Riddiough said. “She’s now ready to take a step in a leadership role, which if you’ve asked me this last year, I just didn’t think she was ready to become a vocal leader and guide the younger through. This year, I think she’s ready and willing to step into that role.”
Due to the success of last season, Kuzmich understands there may be some sort of pressure on her and the rest of the team in replicating their play from a year ago.
“This is my fourth season at Hofstra and every season we just go into it like any other,” Kuzmich said. “During preseason we come up with a list of long-term and short-term goals, and obviously long-term goals would be winning CAAs again and hopefully making it to third round. But in order to do that we need to focus on our game, and we need to focus on little goals in between. You can have those long-term goals in your head and hope to get there, but in reality, we just need to take it one game at a time and just win as we go.”
The CAA is once again shaping up to be a competitive season of play. With the additions of local rival Stony Brook University, as well as Hampton and Monmouth University, Riddiough believes the conference is peaking at the right time in college athletics.
“I’ve always said the CAAs got tremendous parity and outside of our team the last couple of years, but I do feel with us being younger this year, it brings us a lot closer to the rest of the pack, and I think you’re going to see some emerging teams and programs that’ll become a lot better,” Riddiough said. “I do believe Towson will have a very good year, Elon will be good, UNCW was voted preseason favorite, Northeastern is always good, and then you add in our rival Stony Brook which makes that interesting, and we’ve always had battles with Monmouth in non-conference in years past, so the talent is there and it’s going to be difficult. That’s the beauty of college sports.”
However, before conference play comes non-conference action, and with practices under way and the season opener against Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) fast approaching, Kuzmich is excited to finally get back onto the field and work with the new group of girls.
“Even though it’s good to have a break over the summer, from school and rigorous soccer practice every day, the entire time I’ve just been waiting for August 1 in order to see my friends and play together,” Kuzmich explained. “We’re really excited especially with all the new players coming in.”
For the season opener, Fairleigh Dickinson is ready to make a statement of its own against Hofstra, as Coach Riddiough is eager to see how his team comes to play with the new influx of talent,
“FDU always plays good, they
217;re a physically capable team and they’re returning pretty much the majority of their team from the previous year,” Riddiough said. “They lost in the NEC final last year, they’re preseason second in the NEC, and they’re a veteran squad.”
The Pride kick off their 2022 season against the Knights of FDU on Thursday, August 18, at the Hofstra Soccer Stadium.
Photo Courtesy of Hofstra Athletics
