College Softball: JMU’s Loren LaPorte Speaks on Realignment, Postseason Ban in Podcast Interview

Loren LaPorte has had a busy year.

As her Dukes made their magical run all the way to the Women’s College World Series, LaPorte quickly became a household name in the sport. Her coaching style didn’t change, nor did her ability to give a great quote – now, there are just a lot more people listening to what she has to say.

Her team’s appearance and impressive performance in the WCWS was easily the highlight of the year, but things didn’t slow down there. When conference realignment dominated the college sports landscape for the better part of the fall, JMU became a coveted program and ultimately chose to join the Sun Belt.

Joining Louisiana-Lafayette in a league that now will contain two of the greatest mid-major softball powers in the game, the Dukes’ move to the Sun Belt was met with much acclaim by all but one group: their current conference mates.

Referencing one of the league’s existing by-laws, the CAA presidents voted to deny James Madison the opportunity to participate in the conference postseason in any sport. JMU teams can still participate in the NCAA tournament in any sport, but won’t be able to compete for the conference’s automatic berth.

Appearing on the In the Circle podcast on November 11th, LaPorte had the platform to talk about all of the recent happenings for the first time. In her usual well-spoken way, she didn’t shy away from giving her thoughts on anything.

“Overall, it’s great for our university,” she said of joining the Sun Belt Conference. “It’s a big move for us [and] I think we’re all excited as an athletic department and as a university. The Sun Belt Conference in softball is very, very strong so that’s also exciting… I think it is a wonderful move and this place is electric and excited right now.”

Ever the diplomat, LaPorte was cordial, if somewhat displeased, about the way the conference postseason ban came about. JMU has hosted every CAA softball tournament going back to at least 2014 (the furthest back that the conference records online), which will also change this year.

“It is very unfortunate and you feel for the student-athletes because this is their careers and they don’t get to go back and do anything over,” LaPorte expressed when speaking of the conference’s decision. “It’s tough and it’s really tough for the fall sports, and that’s who I kind-of feel for right now, taking myself out of the picture and looking at the bigger picture… for us, as spring sports, we can still receive an at-large [bid] and figure out our schedules to maybe do that. It’s still very difficult; especially at a mid-major, an at-large bid is not easy. But for me, I feel for the student-athletes.

“We’ve been through a lot of adversity. You know, last year, we could only play thirty-two ballgames, we only played thirty-two ballgames. We had a schedule where we were limited in our number of games and we figured it out, we handled the adversity and we moved on, and that’s kind of what we’re talking to our team about… there are sometimes in life where things like this happen, and it’s not fair and it’s not right, but you can’t dwell on the past and you have to move on and get through it and overcome it. That’s the message that we’re talking to our team about.”

During her appearance, LaPorte also talked about both the 2021 and 2022 seasons and her team, as well as the growth in popularity of college softball in the state of Virginia.

“There are so many good ballplayers coming out of the state of Virginia right now,” she noted. “[There is] a lot of excitement for the game. There are a lot of great pitchers… it’s very exciting that [young players] want to play this sport and they work hard… the buy-in for being a high-level softball player is big in this state right now.”