JMU pitcher Lane Duff recently finished his third season playing in the Valley Baseball League, giving him summer stability even though the pitched for two different teams.
“I would say overall I did pretty well,” Duff, who was a starter for the Harrisonburg Turks, said in a recent phone interview. “My big focus for the summer was to get ahead in the count and throw strikes.”
But an adjustment is awaiting the Lynchburg Christian Academy grad this fall as he prepares for his third pitching coach since he joined the Dukes.
JMU announced in late July that Christian Bourne, a former pitcher for the Dukes, will be the new pitching coaching. Bourne has been on the coaching staff at Radford.
“I have been able to talk to him. He recruited me out of high school for Radford,” said Duff, who has played three seasons at JMU. “I really liked talking to him. He was very personable with me. It is a full circle moment with him coming to JMU.”
Bourne was a member of the pitching staff in 2019 at JMU that had four hurlers drafted, and two of them made the Majors: Paul VI grad Kevin Kelly, who is with Tampa Bay, and Nick Robertson, a Franklin County product who broke in with the Los Angeles Dodgers and has also pitched in the Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and Toronto Blue Jays organizations.
Bourne takes over for former University of Virginia pitcher Shane Halley, who was with the Dukes for two seasons. Halley, who came to Harrisonburg from Division III Marymount, was not mentioned in the JMU release announcing the hiring of Bourne – the nephew of former JMU athletics director Jeff Bourne, a graduate of Bridgewater College.
Duff admits the change came as a surprise, and he is not sure if Halley had taken another job as of early August. Halley pitched in the minor leagues for the Kansas City Royals and Colorado Rockies after starring for the Cavaliers in Charlottesville.
Duff pitched for Harrisonburg the summer of 2024, then played the following year for the Charlottesville Tom Sox under head coach and former MLB pitcher Randy Tomlin – his coach in high school at LCA.
“Pitching for Randy was awesome,” Duff said of Tomlin, who pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates and was a minor league coach with the Washington Nationals. “Playing for LCA was a really good experience. The standard was already set, a standard of success and a winning culture.”
One of his former LCA teammates, pitcher Ben Blair, was recently drafted out of Liberty in the second round by the Tampa Bay Rays. Logan Duff, his brother, also played at LCA and was a senior catcher this spring and hit .379 for Randolph-Macon as the Yellow Jackets made the Division III national tourney.
This summer, Lane Duff was able to play under Turner Ashby graduate Tyler Bocock, who was a first-year head coach in the Valley League. His staff included Luke Keister, a former standout at Spotswood who played this past spring at Averett after transferring from Shenandoah.
“They were awesome. From day one, it was cool to play for a younger coach. He is super energetic and gets to the field early,” Duff said of Bocock, 33, who played in college at Stetson. “Coach Keister, I loved having him. I got to play against him in high school.”
Duff pitched only 6.2 innings this past spring for JMU as a junior, with an ERA of 13.50.
This summer for the Turks, however, he pitched in 10 games with eight starts and was 0-2 with an ERA of 3.57 while fanning 47 batters in 45.1 innings. Perhaps his best start was against the Staunton Braves on June 10, when he went a season-high seven innings and allowed no runs on five hits in a game the Turks eventually lost.
JMU has had several pitchers drafted in recent years.
Luke McGrath, a pitching teammate with Duff this spring, was recently drafted by the Chicago Cubs.
“I can’t say I was surprised. He is one of the hardest-working guys I have been around,” said Duff, noting that McGrath bounced back from surgery early in his JMU career.
The pitching coach at JMU before Halley was Jimmy Jackson, who now has the same role at the University of Maryland. Jackson was the pitching coach when the Dukes had four hurlers drafted by MLB clubs in 2019.
Earlier this year, Maryland pitcher Lance Williams was drafted by the Cubs. He pitched in high school at Page County and William Monroe.
Notebook
Valley League champs
Winchester beat Tomlin’s squad for the 2026 Valley League title. It was the first title for Winchester since 2004.
Harrisonburg was knocked out of the playoffs by the Waynesboro Generals.
2026 RCBL season wrap
In the semifinals of the Rockingham County Baseball League playoffs, Bridgewater upset regular-season champion Clover Hill.
The Reds advanced to face Grottoes in the title series, and the Cardinals were aiming for their first league title since 1996. But Bridgewater swept the series, 4-0, winning the final game, 18-8, at home on Aug. 12 at Ray Heatwole Field.
Clover Hill won the title in 2024 and 2025 to give them 20 RCBL crowns – the most of any club in a league that began in 1924.
Bridgewater has now won the title 18 times.
Anthony Arrichiello of Clover Hill was the league MVP, while Massanutten had the pitcher of the year (Avery Schaeffer), rookie of the year (Jake Reichert) and coach of the year (Nolan Potts).
Reichert has committed to Patrick & Henry Community College, while Arrichiello and Schaeffer have played at Shenandoah.
RCBL Hall inductees
Two former players at Bridgewater College were part of the 2026 RCBL Hall of Fame class: Larry French and Danny Davis, the latter of whom also played at Turner Ashby. The class also included former Grottoes slugger Aaron McCarthy, Yates Hall, Jim Harlow, Bill Martz, Pete McCurdy, Mark Merica, Jeff Monroe, Bud Sheffer and Lynn Sipe.
Hall, from Front Royal, was drafted out of Virginia by the St. Louis Cardinals in the fourth round in 1994 and reached the Double-A level. He also played for Prince William in the Carolina League when it was part of the St. Louis chain.
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David Driver
