JMU Water Polo!

This is our 640th post here at JMUSB and I’m pretty confident it’s the first time we’ve ever mentioned the men’s club water polo squad.  It’s the summer though, and Rob and I are split as usual on whether or not the sky is falling and JMU has their eyes facing forward (as opposed to say, facing the inside of their lower intestine) when it comes to realignment, so we’re going a different direction this Friday morning.  Plus, as we mentioned back when Lawless came out, author, alum, and friend of JMUSB Matt Bondurant is rapidly moving up the list of notable Dukes.

Swimming in the North Atlantic? Shrinkage!

This month he has reported on, and penned, a cool feature story for Outside magazine on marathon ocean swimming and the “interesting” folks that love the little-publicized sport (as keen observers of our shared @JMUsportsblog account may have noticed, I’m a very amateur participant in a similarly niche and kook-filled sport of endurance adventure racing so I kind of love the celebration of these nuts!). Even better, Bondurant himself is an amateur athlete in the sport and even shouts out in the article that his swimming background included playing water polo at JMU!  Speaking of, if anyone knows the current status of the club, assuming there still is one, feel free to update us on its goings-on in the comments and we’ll try not to let another 640 posts come before we circle back.  Beyond the article, Bondurant’s third novel The Night Swimmer is set in a fictional recreation of the area in which the article takes place – County Cork, Ireland – and is just a cool read (though it was really tough to top the Virginia-heavy Wettest County in the World, on which Lawless was based).

Finally, while desperately trying to avoid editorializing, I should share for the non-Twitter audience that CUSA officially announced this week that they have shelved all talk of expansion “for the foreseeable future” and the Sun Belt apparently has done the same.  So unless a lifeline is thrown from the long-silent MAC, JMU is back is back in the CAA with “peers” like Elon and Albany and playing FCS football “for the foreseeable future” while ODU fans can play with Taylor Heinicke in a bowl game on NCAA ’13.  Knew I’d never make it – sorry Rob.