How do you define success for a sports team? Is it a winning season? A championship run? Consistently competing for a postseason spot? However you define it, Hofstra women’s soccer fits the bill.

I’ve been following this team since my freshman year in 2016. That was their worst season since I’ve been a student, but they still ended with an impressive record. If 10-7-1 is their worst record in three years, something is going right.

Unfortunately for Hofstra, five of those seven losses came against Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) opponents, so they missed the CAA postseason even though they had a better overall record than four of the six teams that made the bracket. They were also the only team in the conference with a winning overall record that missed out on postseason play.

The 2017-18 season was a different story. In one of the best regular seasons in the team’s history, Hofstra put together a 15-4-2 record and an unblemished 9-0-0 slate in CAA play. The last time a team was undefeated in conference play was back in 2010 when, you guessed it, Hofstra went 11-0 only to lose to James Madison University (JMU) in the CAA title game. The Pride still received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament in 2010 and got through the first round before falling to Boston College in the second. 

Hofstra carried their success into 2018 by earning another CAA tournament berth, as the No. 3 seed this time, and winning their second-straight CAA title. Unlike the previous season, they shut out every opponent they faced in the tournament, including in the final against the No. 1 seed, JMU.

Now, in 2019, the Pride is predicted to three-peat as CAA champions and are well on their way to that goal. Hofstra is on a six-game winning streak, currently the longest in the CAA, with a 7-3 overall record. Two of their three losses came against ranked opponents.

This team has shown incredible consistency throughout the years, dating all the way back to when the Pride – then the Flying Dutchmen – first joined the CAA conference in 2001.

Since then, the team has never finished with a losing overall record and has only missed the tournament twice. 

Let me repeat that: In the last 18 years, the Hofstra Pride has only missed the CAA women’s soccer tournament two times. This team is good, and they have been for a long time.

One of the keys to all this success is coaching. Head coach Simon Riddiough is in his 14th year at the helm for the Pride and has yet to end the season with a losing record. He has led the team to four conference championships (2007, 2012, 2017, 2018) and has been to seven title games. In other words, out of his 13 completed seasons, seven of them, or 54% of them, have included a CAA title game appearance, which is nearly unheard of.

Another reason for the success of this women’s soccer program, at least in the three full seasons that I’ve been here, is the consistency of the core group of players. Obviously there will be changes in the starting lineup and star players that graduate, such as Jill Mulholland, Kristin Desmond, Jenn Buoncore, Jenna Borresen and Ashley Wilson, but the same core group has been on the pitch for the Pride since 2017.

That year, Riddiough brought in what could be the best freshman class ever. Bella Richards, Sabrina Bryan, Jordan Littleboy, Lucy Porter and Lucy Shepherd combined for 12 goals as freshmen and have not stopped contributing since. 

In 2018, after the team lost their 2017 leading scorer in Desmond, Bryan and Porter exploded for 24 goals between the two of them. Both were named to the CAA First Team that year and cemented their roles as leaders on the team.

Now in their junior year, those five continue to produce on the pitch and are now joined by young studs like sophomore Miri Taylor, who won CAA Rookie of the Year in 2018, and freshman Skylar Kuzmich, who has earned the starting position as goalie.

The bottom line is, this team has been one of the most successful teams on campus. They have been consistently competing for CAA championships for the last 18 years and it doesn’t look like they’ll be slowing down anytime soon. 

So, go to games and cheer them on. 

Support the team however you can. 

This is a special program on campus – and one that deserves all the recognition it can get.

Image courtesy of Adam Flash