How to build a national contender
Soccer coach voted Virginia Coach of the Year for third time in 18 years at Madison
Posted on January 10, 2008
Dave Lombardo traveled down to a barren James Madison University campus after fall finals in 1989, hoping to get a break from the snow in New Hampshire. But he arrived at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport to a familiar winter sight.
“I don’t know what I expected, I don’t know if I expected palm trees or what,” Lombardo says. “[But] I got down here and they had as much snow on the ground as we did.”
The snow was a letdown, but his interview with JMU administrators was some consolation. After spending a couple years out of the profession, Lombardo’s successful interview put him in position for a return to coaching women’s soccer. Almost two decades later, he hasn’t left.
Lombardo is the type of coach who gives his players much more than just on-the-field guidance. He’ll tell you he’s 5-foot-9 (its debatable whether that’s wishful thinking) but few have higher stature in terms of respect from their peers and pupils.
College coaches often trade in success for higher-profile gigs. But at JMU, Lombardo has shunned multiple job offers in his 18 years at the helm. Why does he turn down opportunities to coach at more prominent institutions? Probably because he started the program he coaches, and has molded it into a perennial national contender.
From long shot to longtime coach
When Lombardo started JMU’s program in 1990, he had no Division I coaching experience. He interviewed for two days with JMU administrators in December 1989, and some time went by because of the holidays, according to Lombardo. Madison’s athletic director at the time, Dean Ehlers, was impressed with the interview and described Lombardo as a people person. But Lombardo was skeptical.
“To be honest with you, I thought I was going to be a real long shot because I didn’t have any Division I coaching experience at that time,” Lombardo says.
While he didn’t have Division I coaching experience, he did have experience starting a varsity program. He cultivated the club women’s soccer team into one of the top Division II programs in the country at Keene State College, a small school in New Hampshire. He was a varsity coach at Keene State for seven years and spent three years as the Owls’ club team coach before that.
Ehlers’ only reservation regarded Lombardo’s recent departure from the coaching profession. He coached at Keene State from 1981-87 before resigning and focusing on his position as academic administrator.
“Our concern was basically, he gave up coaching — why is he wanting to come back,” Ehlers says. “We decided after meeting with David that he really was interested in coaching again, and he thought with scholarships he could do a better job.”
Lombardo didn’t have the benefit of scholarships at Keene State and basically held open tryouts to fill his team. Despite the lack of resources, Lombardo led the Owls to an NCAA tournament appearance in 1983, in their third year as a varsity team.
“I was very impressed with him as a person, that he would be able to recruit,” Ehlers says. “He meets people well and easily, and I think we made a good choice.”
JMU administrators ultimately decided that Lombardo’s accomplishments at the small school in New Hampshire made him suitable for the job.
Lombardo recounts the phone call and says, “Somebody contacted me in January saying ‘Well we’ve got good news and we’ve got bad news. The good news is you’re our first choice candidate; the bad news is the governor just put a hiring freeze and we don’t know when they’re going to lift that.’”
Because JMU couldn’t officially give him the job, Lombardo continued to work as director of admissions at Keene State, making a couple trips a month to Virginia to recruit for Madison’s new team. He could have resigned as director of admissions in January, but if he left any later than that he would have put Keene State at a disadvantage for bringing in the new class of students.
“The hiring freeze lasted until almost the beginning of March, and they finally lifted it and offered me the job and I took it,” Lombardo says. “But I took it with the conditions that I could not leave Keene State until the summer, until I had seated that class for them.”
While Lombardo was focused on fulfilling his duties at Keene State, his recruiting trips down south were of equal importance. He would have the benefit of offering scholarships to players immediately, something he never had in New Hampshire.
“He convinced me that this was something that he really wanted to do,” Ehlers says. “He wanted to get back into coaching, something that he loved, and get out of the track that he had taken into administration.”
Lombardo won over the JMU administration with his genuine and personable nature, and his emphasis on academics was also a factor. Senior Annie Lowry remembers being swayed toward JMU as a college recruit because of Lombardo’s straightforward manner.
“He told me he’s not gonna sugar coat things,” Lowry says. “He’s not gonna try to sell the campus to me or the school to me, but he’s gonna let it speak for [itself], which was one of the realest things I had ever heard. That’s kind of what attracted me to this school.”
The JMU administration expected Lombardo’s team to be competitive regionally, and he accomplished that goal quickly. In 1991, his second year coaching at JMU, the team finished second in the ECAC championships. Two years later, the Dukes were ECAC runner-ups again.
His breakthrough year was 1995, when JMU made its first NCAA tournament appearance after winning the Colonial Athletic Association tournament and an automatic bid to the NCAAs. The Dukes would make it five NCAA appearances in a row as they received at-large qualifications each year from 1996-99.
While JMU emerged as a national contender in the 90s, Lombardo continued to place an emphasis on academics that’s still in effect today. “That’s actually why I started looking at this school first,” Lowry says. “He definitely pushes us to reach our potential, he sends us emails to congratulate us on our GPAs and holds the team to a higher standard than most coaches would.”
Last fall, Lombardo punctuated his 18th season at Madison by leading JMU to its eighth NCAA tournament appearance and a school record 17 wins. The Dukes compiled a 17-5-1 record and earned an at-large berth to the NCAAs. For his efforts, Lombardo was voted Virginia Coach of the Year by members of the Virginia Sports Information Directors Association. It was the third time he has received that honor, including the 1995 and 1996 seasons.
But to understand Lombardo’s success at JMU, you have to look back on his experience as an athletic administrator at Keene State College.
Administration and Instruction
After graduating from Southern Connecticut State University in 1976, Lombardo decided to pursue a master’s degree in higher education from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, and completed that degree in 1980. He began his professional career as administrative assistant at Keene State, and became director of admissions at the age of 30.
“It was very difficult to find teaching jobs in Connecticut at that time — the market was saturated,” Lombardo said. “I had an opportunity to get a graduate degree in higher education administration, and I thought that’s what I wanted to do, go work in the administrative side of things, maybe eventually become a dean of students or vice president of student affairs, or something along those lines.”
Before rising to the top of his field as an academic administrator, Lombardo had felt that he might be suited for another vocation. While playing soccer for his coach at SCSU, Bob Dikranian, Lombardo developed an affinity for the technical aspects of the game.
“It was a great soccer environment and I had a great coach,” Lombardo says. “He was the person that really inspired me to get into the coaching ranks.”
At the same time he participated in collegiate sports, he was involved in extracurriculars relating to his education degree. Lombardo taught high school as a student teacher and substitute teacher while at Southern Connecticut State, and got involved with coaching track and soccer as well. These experiences fueled the ambitions that would lead him to pioneer the varsity women’s soccer program at Keene State.
When he started his professional career at the small school in New Hampshire, his jobs were mostly in the administrative field, he says. He focused on admissions, and coaching was just something he did “on the side.” There weren’t many full-time coaching positions at Keene State.
But there was a club women’s soccer team. Lombardo began coaching it, and helped elevate the team to varsity status. One day, he saw an advertisement for the coaching job at James Madison University, and he started considering other possibilities.
“I remember just seeing that and wondering what it would be like to have an opportunity to just coach on a full-time basis,” Lombardo says. “Kind of on a whim, I was ready to leave where I was.”
Lombardo reflects on the quaint southwestern New Hampshire town, a place that holds many positive memories for him.
“I was at Keene State for almost 13 years, and I had gone up there with sort of the expectation that I was going to stay there for about three to five years and I certainly surpassed that. It was a great little college, beautiful little small New England town, but I was ready for a change.”
While he accomplished a lot in Keene, his accomplishments in Harrisonburg are even more notable. The NCAA committee recognizes Madison’s strength of schedule and competitiveness even when the Dukes fail win their conference tournament. Out of the eight tournament appearances JMU has had, six of them were at-large qualifications.
And you can bet that Lombardo uses that to impress recruits, but when a coach is entering his 19th season in charge of a successful program that he built, Lowry said it best: it speaks for itself.
