The three newest and most prominent figures in the James Madison athletic department stood in a room together for the first time Friday morning.

Incoming athletic director Matt Roan was chatting with recently hired men’s basketball coach Preston Spradlin in a lobby area of the Festival Conference and Student Center, each waiting for their time to enter the ongoing JMU Board of Visitors meeting. Football coach Bob Chesney — the longest tenured of the trio with four months on the job — arrived a few minutes later and greeted them with handshakes.

It was a momentous event in JMU sports history with the three men stepping into roles with gargantuan shoes to fill. Naturally there was urgent business to discuss: How old are your kids? Mine too. Have you hired a realtor yet? That neighborhood looks nice.

As Chesney reminded the board later, they aren’t just charged with building off what has been an almost surreally successful 2023-24 academic year on the JMU sports front, they’re also people joining the community and that has come to expect the Dukes to thrive.

“We understand the value of those relationships and the human element and the human touch, which it comes down to it,” Chesney said. “I think in the past we’ve played really, really good football. We’ve done a really good job in collecting support. But I don’t know that we’ve given as much as we could have or should have.”

It was the official introduction to the Board of Visitors for all three. Spradlin has been on the job for a few weeks now, taking over for Mark Byington after the Dukes went 32-4 on the hardwood, won the Sun Belt championship and knocked off Wisconsin in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Chesney replaces Curt Cignetti, who left for Indiana after guiding the Dukes to a Top 25 ranking in each of their first two FBS seasons and the school’s first bowl game last December. Roan, hired this week, takes over for Jeff Bourne who is retiring after 25 years.

For the time being, they’ll all work for Charlie King, who was named the university’s interim president on Friday. King, a longtime JMU vice president who preceded Bourne into retirement, worked with the outgoing AD to engineer JMU’s move to the FBS football and the Sun Belt Conference, secure funding for the state-of-the-art sports facilities across campus and make James Madison arguably the most successful mid-major athletic department in the nation.

“The Tweet that sticks with me most from yesterday was four simple words,” Roan said. “Don’t mess this up.”

No pressure, right?

“We understand the shoes we have to fill of Mr. Bourne, but I think we’re up for the challenge,” Roan continued. “We want to have comprehensive broad-based success. My job is easy because I get to work with such a great group of coaches.”

It was Bourne’s 100th Board of Visitors meeting as the JMU athletic director and first for Roan as their tenures began to overlap during the transition. Bourne did some heavy lifting on his way out, hiring Chesney from Holy Cross and Spradlin from Morehead State after they each racked up conference championships and postseason appearances at school’s where those things have previously been few and far between.

But there’s still plenty of work ahead for Roan and Co. Fans are clamoring for an expansion of Bridgeforth Stadium with the waiting list for football season tickets nearing 1,000.

A groundbreaking Virginia law related to name, image and likeness payments for players goes into effect on July 1, but it’s still unclear what exactly that will mean for JMU. And on Friday, Memphis, a peer Group of 5 conference school the Dukes recruit against in multiple sports, secured $25 million in corporate funds for its NIL efforts.

These are challenges Roan, Chesney and Spradlin each face while also looking for houses to buy and bracing pre-teen children for life in a new city and a new school.

“My family is also in town,” Chesney said. “They have a week off from school, so they are down here looking at houses and trying to figure it out. I’m excited for them to get down here and start our lives down here.”