Last fall, Sean O’Regan drove to Sentara Park to watch the James Madison lacrosse team in its offseason practices.

O’Regan, the JMU women’s basketball coach, wasn’t there to see how well the Dukes could pass the ball or run up and down the field. He was looking to see why they are such a successful program.

The Dukes have seven consecutive NCAA Tournaments and won the 2018 national title.

O’Regan wanted to see what he could learn from coach Shelley Klaes’ program, as he tried to get his team back into the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2016.

“They’re doing something right,” O’Regan said.

Fast forward months later and O’Regan’s team is back in the Big Dance after winning the Sun Belt Conference tournament, the 26th conference title – regular season or tournament – that a JMU women’s sports team has won in the past five years.

The success of JMU’s women’s sports programs isn’t just dominated by one or two sports, rather nine different programs have won at least one conference title – swim and dive brought home four straight from 2019-2022.

For JMU Athletic Director Jeff Bourne, each time a team wins a championship, the rest of the athletic department is excited, but it also raises the internal bar for the other coaches on campus.

“Coaches are very competitive and they do not like to lose,” Bourne said. “Whenever a peer around them does well, I think they’re happy for that peer, but it really stokes the inner fire to make sure that one of those teams is recognized. I see that in all of our coaches across the board, they have a burning desire to win.”

But why are JMU’s women’s sports programs consistently successful? It starts with the university’s campus and it stretches into the athletic department’s support and culture.

The Setting

JMU, which is nestled in the Shenandoah Valley, has a college campus that’s “beautiful and safe,” O’Regan said and that makes it attractive to prospective recruits on top of the academic programs it offers.

With a campus that has mountains not too far away, O’Regan said the university’s setting and its various degree programs help in the recruiting process.

“I think you can get a really high level of female student-athletes here,” O’Regan said. “I think it fits. This place has a lot of what I think high-level female student-athletes want. I just think it matches up really well.”

JMU has a wide-ranging spectrum of majors, including various pre-professional programs that are also alluring for many female recruits. The university originated as a women’s college and that long history has served the Dukes well when it comes to attracting top female recruits.

Kevin Warner, JMU’s assistant athletic director for communications, pointed to those factors as some reasons why the university is able to recruit on a high level.

“All of that is not to take anything away from the infrastructure we have in place, the culture we have in place, everything we built as an athletics program,” Warner said. “But I do think a reason why our female programs have had sustained success for decades is because the university is so naturally attractive to women who are going to play these sports.”

Support

As JMU’s softball team opened its home schedule, in a newly-renovated Veterans Memorial Park stadium on March 9, there were a couple familiar faces sitting behind home plate: University President Jonathan Alger and his wife, Mary Ann.

Alger isn’t a stranger to JMU sporting events and his support is unique from other universities around the country, Bourne said.

“That does not happen in many places,” Bourne said. “And to me, that’s indicative of the level of support that exists, whether it’s one of our board of visitors members or our administration. I think that’s just a very different culture than what we see when we go to other places. It happens here and there, but it’s not as pervasive as you see here.”

JMU’s administrative support of its athletic programs, women’s specifically, isn’t limited to just attending games in person, but it stretches into the financial end as well.

The university spent more than $2 million on the softball stadium’s renovation, which included a seating expansion that now allows 1,500 people to attend, as well as new lighting, fresh padding on the outfield wall and a redone press box.

“It comes down to the support that the administration and the university gives to us,” softball coach Loren LaPorte said of what sets JMU apart. “We feel so supported and I think that’s important to all the women here. The administration puts a lot of time, effort and money into women’s sports and we think our players appreciate that.”

And for Bourne, when JMU invests in a new athletics building or renovation, it isn’t going to just do the minimum. Instead, he said he’s focused on doing it the best JMU can do.

“I think JMU’s unique across the board, not only the equity across sports programs, but in terms of how it looks holistically at the institution,” Bourne said. “It’s how the campus is kept up, it’s when we build a new facility, we build a first-class facility, we’re not just building something. I think that same type of pervasive thought goes across everything that we do.”

That same thinking appeared to be used with the women’s basketball team’s trip to Columbus, Ohio for the NCAA Tournament. The trip, which was under 400 miles, didn’t qualify for a chartered flight from the NCAA, but Bourne and the university chartered a plane for the team any ways.

“So thankful to our amazing administration for providing a charter to Ohio State for the first round,” Dukes assistant coach Neil Harrow wrote on Twitter. “We are very grateful.”

JMU’s support for its women’s programs is the same as its men’s programs, which isn’t the same everywhere. According to an NPR story in June, schools with FBS football programs had gender gap funding that “approached nearly 3-to-1 ratios.”

In JMU’s position, Bourne said that there aren’t any limitations for recruiting or scholarships, with all of its programs – men’s and women’s – being fully funded.

On top of recruiting and scholarships, each sports program has its own dedicated athletic trainer, which Bourne added that not every university in the country has.

“When you look at the support that we provide to the student-athletes across the board; whether it’s academic, sports medicine, strength and conditioning, nutrition, everything we do is really designed to have a platform, so we can say legitimately, they can win a conference championship,” Bourne said. “They’ve got the tools they need to do that.”

O’Regan, who’s led the Dukes for the past seven seasons, pointed to how JMU’s support is different from other places he’s heard about from his peers.

“I know talking to colleagues, I know that it isn’t the same,” O’Regan said. “Here, we’ve always been treated the same way. We’ve never been told to practice outside of when the men were practicing. We’ve never been treated like we were second-class citizens. That’s courtesy of Jeff, that’s the culture he’s created from the top down and that becomes the standard, right?”

Culture

There’s an expectation at JMU, across the entire athletic department, to win games for every sport – from women’s basketball to women’s golf to football. It’s all the same.

For Bourne, that culture is important as the Dukes’ athletic programs have all found success in his tenure.

“There’s an expected balance of success,” Bourne said. “We don’t go into the year and say we want men’s basketball and football to win – it’s really everybody. And it’s the culture we foster here of equity across the board.”

JMU’s culture is something that Bourne said helps attract high-level recruits year in and year out.

“The student-athletes who go here and are lured to this culture, they perform really well,” Bourne said.

Not only does the culture play a role in recruiting, but it also is felt on the playing fields across campus.

For Klaes, the Dukes’ lacrosse coach, the championship-level culture is something that drives her team to want to succeed and do well when they see others, like softball and volleyball, make it to the national stage.

“I think when you’re surrounded by elite-minded athletes, programs, coaches and administrators, it becomes contagious,” Klaes said. “We love that we get inspired by the different programs around us, we’re competitors.”

With a long history of successful women’s sports, Bourne doesn’t anticipate JMU’s commitment to waver.

“The commitment I think has run deep for a long period of time here,” Bourne. “I don’t see it changing in the future. It’s who we are as an institution And frankly, I couldn’t be more proud of the young women and men in our program.”