The James Madison volleyball team?
“They’re a great group of girls and super resilient and tough,” JMU coach Lauren Steinbrecher said.
Good thing, too, because those kids have been through a lot.
Yes, every NCAA volleyball team dealt with COVID and all that it entailed the past couple of years. But JMU was dealt another sucker punch.
By its own conference, of all things.
JMU was a longtime member of the Colonial Athletic Association. But the first week of November it became apparent that JMU was making the move to the Sun Belt Conference.
And the CAA wasn’t happy.
CAA commissioner Joe D’Antonio told USA Today’s Dan Wolken that JMU would be ineligible for conference team championships while it remained in the league.
“It’s a policy that we have as a conference, and it was a decision made by the board of directors to adhere to the policy and the bylaws of the conference and enforce those going forward,” D’Antonio told Wolken. “There’s precedent for it. This happened when other schools have left, and all our institutions are aware that this is a bylaw that exists.”
On November 6, 2021, with less than two weeks left to the CAA volleyball season, JMU announced that it was Sun Belt-bound no later than July 1, 2023.
That same morning, JMU swept Towson to improve to 16-5 overall, and, at 10-3 overtook Towson in the league standings.
But with no conference title to chase — and an NCAA RPI in the 50s — JMU’s season would end no matter how the CAA-leading Dukes finished.
The next day, they lost at home to Towson. On November 13, they swept at Hofstra and then got swept by Hofstra.
That was it.
JMU, 17-7 overall, 11-5 in the CAA, was going home for the offseason.
“I mean, it was awful,” Steinbrecher said. “I know a lot of universities are going through it, but the way the conference handled it with a completely outdated by-law harms the student-athletes. It was a heart-breaking experience.
“We were tied for first when they made the announcement and to not give those girls a chance to compete for a championship,” she said, shaking her head, “which at our level is everything.
“It was horrible, especially after COVID.”
In 2019, JMU finished 20-8, 13-3 in the CAA, but lost to Towson in the conference tournament championship match. In the shortened 2020 season, the Dukes went 7-3, 6-1 in the CAA, and lost in the conference tourney semifinals.
Last fall, after JMU was told to stay home,…
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