JMU Sports Weekend Wrap: The Agony and The Ecstacy
Sports are great. Or they’re not. Your team can make you feel like you’re walking on air when times are good. When times are bad though, not so much. We could go on and on with this stupid intro, but the point is that this was a very up and down weekend when it comes to JMU sports. Let’s get to it.
JMU softball carried a 36 game winning streak into last week’s CAA tournament, before dropping the opener to Hofstra. The Dukes rallied in the losers bracket to get another crack at the Pride in the finals. The ladies came up big with a 3-2 win to force a winner take all second game. We Feel Like: We’ve got a spring in our step.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out too well in the final game. Hofstra won a squeeker 2-1 to capture the CAA crown. We Feel Like: Someone kicked us in the shins. Hard.
The ladies of JMU lacrosse had an outstanding season and managed to capture another CAA title. The Dukes were rewarded with a bid to the NCAA tournament and a match-up against USC. With the game scheduled for Friday evening in Durham, NC, the seniors would be unable to participate in graduation. We Feel Like: Someone stole our sandwich from the office fridge and ate it.
Fortunately, President Alger held a special graduation for the players as soon as they stepped off the practice field. We Feel Like: The world is a happy place.
The Dukes looked pretty good for most of the game and lead for a while. Then things took a turn for the worse and the Trojans managed to coast home for a 13-10 victory, ending JMU’s season. We Feel Like: We could use a beer.
The Diamond Dukes played their final home series under head coach Spanky McFarland this weekend. Given the way the past few seasons have gone, we haven’t paid much attention to the squad this year. We Feel Like: We’re completely indifferent.
JMU split the first two games of its series against Hofstra. The Dukes took the opener 10-7 and then dropped a close one 8-6 to set up a rubber match for the series finale. We Feel Like: A team we don’t follow did sports stuff.
The Dukes’ bats exploded in game three for Spanky’s home sendoff. JMU scored a whopping 23 runs and finished the home season with a 23-7 win. We Feel Like: We’d probably be thrilled if a team in a sport we followed won this convincingly.
And finally, the NCAA selection committee announced softball College World Series bids this evening. The Dukes are dancing. Oh, and they’ll be dancing in Veterans Memorial Park because the NCAA did something right for once and awarded the Dukes the 15th overall seed. That’s right, the powers that be actually recognized that slipping up against another strong program doesn’t outweigh months of sustained excellence. So JMU will be hosting Binghampton, Fordham, and NC State in the Harrisonburg Regional next week. We Feel Like: Everything is coming up Milhouse.
I feel as if you were reading my mind when you wrote this post! College sports, whether they be men’s or women’s, have a way of playing with your emotions. Their unpredictability is at the core of college sports’ appeal.
Keep up the good, insightful postings. Many of us enjoy your observations and your passion for JMU athletics.
I get that not a lot is going on but I see a direct correlation between the lack of comments over the last few posts and the subject matter. Glad they are having a good year. Will be more excited when the season is over and we can get on to the ever exciting “Summer Voting Bracket”. Favorite/Best JMU Sports Stars is my suggestion for this year.
Let’s put aside the fact that it appears that there was some type of technical issue with the blog server — several posts that had multiple comments suddenly had “0” and I was unable to post at all (maybe Todd and Rob banned me, ’tis possible).
Yeah, let’s judge the worthiness of a sport / team by the number of comments to a blog post…hurry up and lose, will ya! Or maybe I totally missed the ‘tongue in cheek’ point of LD’s post.
I’d much rather read multiple rants about:
students who don’t come to enough games / don’t cheer loud enough / leave too early
how much the FB defense sucks
men’s basketball and baseball are varying levels of train wrecks (the 4-way tie atop the CAA notwithstanding)
…oh, wait a minute, baseball doesn’t really matter either
conference affiliation, otherwise known as “how can we be in the same football conference with Stony Brook” lament
Not all of us worship exclusively at the altar of football and men’s hoops. Frankly, if it wasn’t for WBB, WLAX, and SB, I’m not sure anybody would notice much if some of our men’s programs took a couple of years off from competition.
If you don’t live in Harrisonburg, the only way to get an objective look at JMU’s sports is through a blog like this. The DNR (incl. the rivals page) and jmusports.com are homer sources and the “State’s Newspaper” in Richmond doesn’t substantially acknowledge the existence of anyone other than UR, VCU, UVA or VT.
Lack of comments does not directly correlate to lack of interest in the subject matter. The acquaintances I have in the sports talk radio business tell me roughly 90% of people listening to sports talk radio NEVER call in to a show.
Nobody’s asking the JMUSB guys to cover every sport like they do FB and MBB (they don’t want to / have time to as they have actual lives); it is not unreasonable to devote some journalistic inches to teams that actually perform.
[steps down from soapbox]
When I was in school I could NEVER study in the lirabry because it was too distracting. Luckily, for the most part my dorm was fairly quiet (it was mostly upper year students) and what noise that did occur could be drowned out by my own music usually.I feel like people go to the lirabry just to hang out almost now because there’s space for them to sit and then they can chill with their friends. Very frustrating for those of us who want to, you know, STUDY.
Hi richard! Thank you for the post. When you wrote “understanding and expression of Christianity” were you hinting at anything? I would love to hear your thoughts. Jeehye