Quick Spring Sports News and Notes

As expected, nothing new on the conference front.  Sun Belt officials are scheduled to visit Liberty this week and there’s at least some speculation Harrisonburg may be on their iteniary as well, but who knows.  If you haven’t read it, there’s a very enlightening piece on why the window to move up may be slamming shut right now and we’d encourage you to read it here (this is important and you can figure why on your own, though it should be noted the cost per school per share of adding more members is really not “that” significant if you think of it in terms of profit to be earned from a single home game at BFS or similar spots or from the added revenue of having a conference championship game).

Less expected, and more outrageous, still no news on a new contract for Matt Brady.  Pay the man.  Seriously Bourne/King/et al, not signing him last year has cost you dearly this year.  Get over it and get it done.

The VERY few readers we had back when we started JMUSB may remember we used to work our butts off that first winter and spring dutifully following up the stories on JMU Sports on nearly every sport.  We didn’t really know what to write about and we definitely hadn’t figured out that the voice of cranky old alums with a nostalgic leaning would resonate.  So though we love us some field hockey (well, mainly Coach Lucas!), we don’t get around as often as we should to bringing you all up to date on other happenings.  But with spring sports in the home stretch, probably time to mention at least the successful ones this year.

Huge congrats to Cheerleading for nearly defending their title at Nationals in Daytona this weekend.  2nd place to follow up a win last year is simply outstanding!  Plus a 4th place spot for the Dukettes as they just missed the podium.  The postseason hoops runs by both the men and women really kept these squads busy till the last minute, but they still delivered great performances.

Death. Taxes. Casey Ancarrow filling the statsheet.

Next, WLax knocked off previously unbeaten (CAA) Drexel over the weekend and locked up a spot in the four-team CAA tourney.  The win over the likely #1 Dragons also has to be a huge boost of belief for a team that can really make a run towards the big dance!

And finally, softball just keeps rolling (and putting their male counterparts to shame), finishing off a sweep of GMCC over the weekend.  This team that’s been on the fringes of the top 25 for the first time in program history is primed for great things this postseason!  Baseball shall not be spoken of this preseason and if you care, check out the new JMU message boards here for quite a bit of the “fire the coach” venom we usually see in football and hoops.  New message boards look good and the CAA Zone, like it’s namesake, is dead.

Good luck to all the spring sports and long postseason runs are most, most welcomed by dork bloggers who have to get through a summer of discontent no matter which way the wind blows on conference realignment.