Fall Sports Roundup (the successful sports that is)

So in all the excitement surrounding the start of hoops season and the black hole of another disappointing football season, we’ve been remiss in reporting on some other great news.  This certainly doesn’t do justice to the accomplishments of JMU’s other Fall Sports, but we at least wanted to make sure to pass along the highlights (Rob and the BSchool crew might call this a “high-level overview”;  only thought of this because the non-lawyer manager at my work used the term “matrix management” in an offhand manner that clearly indicated everyone in the room should know what the hell she was talking about yesterday – classic).

Congrats to CAA Player of the Year CJ Sapong

Men’s Soccer’s C.J. Sapong won the CAA Player of the Year after leading the Conference in BOTH goals and assists.  He is the first Duke ever to be a four-time CAA First Team Member and we can only hope we’ll get to follow his professsional career somewhere soon.

Women’s Soccer likely had the highlight of the Fall by winning the CAA Championship.  They also beat Texas in the first round of the Big Dance before falling 3-1 to defending national champion and #1 UNC last weekend.   Fabulous season from Coach Lombardo’s team!

Women’s Cross Country finished 5th at the NCAA Regionals where they were paced by Senior superstar Alison Paris’ 13th overall.  For many reasons I’ll leave to the running community to discuss, strong senior performances are rare in women’s distance running and it makes me proud to think that Alison and the coach’s have done things right!

Finally, the Volleyball team is our one shining team still playing (not counting the afterthought that is the Orono trip) after storming to wins over Hofstra and Northeastern to clinch a spot in this weekend’s CAA Tourney where they’ll have a chance to advance further.  Last weekend’s performance was led by CAA Defensive Player of the Week Lindsay Callahan.  Let’s Go Dukes!