The Hofstra volleyball team opened Halloween weekend with a 3-1 victory over UNC Wilmington (UNCW) on Saturday, Oct. 30. Ana Martinovic and Zyare Abdul-Rahim led the match with 14 kills apiece. “I think Zyare has been underutilized, maybe, as an offensive part of our team,” said Hofstra associate head coach Hava Davis. “She is definitely explosive; she has a lot of upside to her and maybe she hasn’t been receiving enough sets in the past and today we went to her quite a bit.”
The Pride (12-10) won the first set handedly, 25-15, highlighted by an 11-1 run that brought the score from 10-8 to 21-9. Four different members of the Pride scored an attack during the run while Martinovic and Bianca Bucciarelli each recorded a service ace. Hofstra also took advantage of four mistakes by the Seahawks (3-19) that resulted in points.
UNCW responded in the second set with a 25-23 win, but it didn’t come without some help. The Pride committed 13 total errors in that set alone. “We were not serving the zones we were hoping to serve with our game plan, and I think our attacking, maybe, was a little bit one-dimensional,” Davis said. “We didn’t set to multiple people until late in the game and we were kind of hitting the same spots on the court frequently so those are things that we should, hopefully, be able to clean up for tomorrow.”
The third set was back-and-forth at the start with each team getting a run of four or more points. With a 15-14 lead, Yagmur Cinel knocked down one of her five kills and the Pride then took advantage of four straight errors by the Seahawks to push the lead to six points. From there, Hofstra cruised to take the set.
UNCW didn’t go down without a fight in the fourth set. The Seahawks held a 22-19 lead late in the set, but Hofstra stormed back, taking three of the next four points. Sarah Blakely notched a kill to give UNCW a chance at set point, but the Pride took the next two on Florencia Wolkowyski kill and Damla Tokman service ace. Tokman’s next serve resulted in an error and the Seahawks were again at set point, leading 25-24. Wolkowyski tied things back up with another kill and the Pride got to match point thanks to a bad set by Brianna Haggerty. Beatriz Alves aced the next serve to end the match.
Despite the win, Coach Davis knows his team has more to give; “I don’t think anybody would be lying if they said they are unhappy with how we got the win,” he said. “We did not perform up to our expectations. UNCW is a very good team, they played very well against us, but we certainly made a few too many unforced errors.”
Hofstra was charged with 40 total errors, ten more than the Seahawks. The Pride also recorded 55 kills compared to UNCW’s 37. Tokman and Wolkowyski each finished with nine kills while Alves served up 45 of the Pride’s 52 assists in the match.
Hofstra finishes the weekend with a Halloween matinee against UNCW at 1 p.m. at the David S. Mack Physical Education Center. After that, the Pride have two more series left against Elon University and James Madison University.
Photo Courtesy of Evan Bernstein/The Hofstra Chronicle
