No James Madison players were included on the IWLCA D1 All-Region Teams (Update #2)

Update #2: We received a response from JMU. Please find the entire message directly below. - Safe/Eri_Barrister.

"We, James Madison, missed the deadline due to a program error. Attempts were made to submit nominations to the organization within 24 hours of the deadline expiring, but those attempts were denied. We had multiple student-athletes deserving of this honor and feel awful that an internal error caused them not to receive this worthy recognition."

Update: After the article posted we received some information from a source that provides some more context regarding the JMU situation. According to our source, the reason no JMU players were named to the IWLCA All-Region teams is because JMU coaches and officials did not submit JMU player names to the IWLCA in time for those players to be added to the list of choices to choose from for All-Region Team. I have reached out to JMU Athletics officials for comment about this information and we’ll update the post with more information as it becomes available. - Safe/Eri_Barrister

The IWLCA, or Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association, released its official list of Division I All-Region women’s lacrosse players on Saturday afternoon.

The All-Region first and second teams include a total of 128 athletes from four regions (Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, South and West/Midwest). It is an incredible honor for these women to be selected to these teams, and being on an All-Region team grants them eligibility to become All-Americans, as announced by the IWLCA in June.

Scrolling through the list of recipients, there are plenty of players from the usual elite programs. Stony Brook has seven All-Region players, same for Maryland and Boston College. UNC has four players on one of the All-Region teams.

In fact, out of the 25 ranked teams in the latest iteration of the IWLCA poll, all but one team had at least one representative on either the first or second team of their respective regions.

The only team that didn’t? James Madison.

Yes, that James Madison. You know, the No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The No. 5 ranked team in both the IWLCA and Inside Lacrosse polls. The Dukes are having their best season in school history, won its highest-rated game ever (against North Carolina), and were CAA Champions (by the way, CAA runner-up Towson had seven players honored).

It’s not as if JMU lacks superstar caliber players. Kristen Gaudian was the CAA Player of the Year and is a Tewaaraton finalist! Elena Romesburg has 58 goals this season and was one of five James Madison players named to All-CAA First Team.

This omission was not a snub. It was not done because of lack of talent. Unless there was some kind of internal feud (there does not seem to be), the lack of James Madison players on the South Region team would appear to have done by pure negligence.

If this is the case, the IWLCA made an egregious mistake and owes it to these talented student-athletes to correct it and add them to the All-Region teams.

The association, whose mission is to “cultivate the growth of and to promote excellence in intercollegiate women’s lacrosse,” as stated on its website, is made up of coaches of all levels in the college game. Its president is Kathy Taylor, head coach of Division II LeMoyne College.