Field Hockey Coach Kathy De Angelis (pictured) joined a growing club in the Hofstra University athletic department when she recorded her 100th career coaching victory in the Pride's 4-1 win over Drexel on Sunday.
De Angelis is now one of eight coaches at Hofstra with at least 100 career wins, including all five of the Pride's fall sport team coaches. Volleyball Coach Fran Kalafer leads all Pride coaches with 603 career victories, while Men's Soccer Coach Richard Nuttall has 151, Women's Soccer Coach JoAnne Russell has 131, and Football Coach Joe Gardi has 114.
Spring sport coaches who have reached the 100-win plateau include Hofstra Softball Coach Bill Edwards with 572, Tennis Coach Bill Gerdts with a combined 300 (200 on the men's side, 100 on the women's side), and Men's Lacrosse Coach John Danowski with 202.
Meanwhile, Wrestling Coach Tom Ryan will almost certainly become the ninth member of the century club this winter, as he raised his career total to 98 wins with 13 victories last year.
De Angelis is in her eighth year at Hofstra and has overseen some tremendous improvement in the field hockey program in that span. The Pride has had four straight winning seasons, and has an excellent chance at extending that streak this fall, as it currently stands at 8-3 on the year. De Angelis has tallied 73 of her career wins at Hofstra after previously coaching at La Salle and Southwest Missouri State.
Kalafer, who was hired at Hofstra in 1980, recently became just the 12th active volleyball coach in all of Division I to record 600 career victories in the Pride's 3-0 win over Virginia Commonwealth on Sept. 23. Kalafer won her first 22 career matches at Stony Brook from 1978-80, and has now won 581 matches in her 25 seasons with the Pride. She has led her teams to 14 conference championships, and has had broken the 30-win barrier four times and the 20-win barrier 18 times.
Danowski was hired in 1986 as the Hofstra Men's Lacrosse Coach after a successful three-year stint at LIU-C.W. Post, where he was 27-16. He has since won 175 games at Hofstra, including a stretch of six straight 10-win seasons from 1998-2003. He completed his 20th season with the Pride last spring and has led the Pride to seven NCAA Division I Tournament appearances, reaching the quarterfinals twice.
Nuttall, Edwards and Gardi then all came to Hofstra within one year of each other. Nuttall was hired to his first collegiate head coaching position at Hofstra in 1989, where he helped turn the program around. After a 4-15-1 record his first season, he guided the Pride to four 10-win seasons from 1993-97, including a 14-4-3 campaign in 1997 when Hofstra went 9-0 in the America East Conference. He led Hofstra to a CAA Championship and its first-ever NCAA Division I Tournament berth last fall.
Edwards also began his collegiate coaching career during the same academic year as Nuttall, coaching his first season for the Pride in the spring of 1990. He has since amassed a 572-282-3 record, while leading the Pride to the regional finals of the NCAA Tournament in each of the last two seasons. His teams have won either a regular season or a postseason conference championship in each of the last 14 years, including eight straight conference tournament titles.
The following fall, Joe Gardi took his first college coaching position with the Pride after serving as an assistant coach with the New York Jets for nine years. He has since compiled a 114-60-2 record in his 16 seasons, while tallying the second best winning percentage in the history of the program. He guided Hofstra to five NCAA Division I-AA Tournament appearances from 1995-2001, while his teams compiled a 44-11 combined record in the five seasons from 1997-2001.
Russell then became the first head coach in the history of the Hofstra Women's Soccer program when she took over the program at the club level in 1992. The Pride upgraded to a varsity program in 1993, and her team won 16 games in only its second season as an NCAA institution in 1994. She has since compiled a 131-86-16 record, including seven 10-win seasons in the last eight years and back-to-back regular season CAA championships in 2003 and 2004.
Gerdts followed Russell two years later when he joined the Hofstra athletic staff in 1994 after a successful coaching stint as the Dowling Men's Tennis coach, where he won 100 matches and lost only 34. Since coming to Hofstra, he has compiled 100 more wins on the men's side and 62 on the women's side. He reached several milestones on the same day when the Hofstra Men's and Women's Tennis teams swept Fairfield on April 17, marking his 200th overall men's victory, his 100th men's victory at Hofstra, and his 100th overall women's victory.
Ryan, who started at Hofstra in 1995-96, will be the next to join the Pride's growing list of 100-win coaches when he picks up his second win of the winter season. His record through his first 10 seasons at Hofstra is 98-70-1, including four straight 10-win seasons heading into this winter. He is a six-time conference coach of the year, and he has led the Pride to five straight conference championships. His teams are also undefeated in their last 41 conference matches (40-0-1).
HOFSTRA COACHES WITH 100 CAREER WINS (as of Oct. 4)
603 - Fran Kalafer, Volleyball (28th season, 25th at Hofstra)
572 - Bill Edwards, Softball (17th season)
300 - Bill Gerdts, Tennis (25th season, 12th at Hofstra) - 200 men's, 100 women's
202 - John Danowski, Men's Lacrosse (24th season, 21st at Hofstra)
151 - Richard Nuttall, Men's Soccer (17th season)
131 - JoAnne Russell, Women's Soccer (13th season)
114 - Joe Gardi, Football (16th season)
100 - Kathy De Angelis, Field Hockey (14th season, 8th at Hofstra)
98 - Tom Ryan, Wrestling (11th season)
