The outlook he has hasn’t changed.

Marlin Ikenberry said he believes there is more in store for his James Madison baseball program. And that is more as in better.

“That’s a great question and it’s something I answered five years ago,” Ikenberry, the coach of the Dukes, told the Daily-News Record on Monday. “It was to win the CAA championship, compete for a championship every year, and eventually get to a point where we can host regionals. That was the vision then and it’s the vision I still have. It’s the vision our staff has and I really feel that way as we continue to grow.”

Earlier in the day, JMU assistant athletic director for communications Kevin Warner said Ikenberry received a one-year contract extension from the school, keeping him in the Dukes’ dugout through the 2021 season.

The skipper’s original five-year deal was set to expire at the end of the month.

In his time at the helm of the program, Ikenberry has a 115-116 mark, which includes this past spring’s coronavirus-abbreviated campaign. But since the beginning of 2019, he’s 41-32, and in 2019 the Dukes won 31 games while posting a winning record for the first time since 2011.

“I wanted to make sure we were evaluating [Ikenberry] on a full season and that we were being fair,” JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne said. “Last year was such a severe modification by not playing in the spring that we felt it was appropriate to just extend a year into 2021. It was the fair and the right thing to do in my mind.”

Ikenberry said he’s grateful for the extension and eager for next spring in order to build off of what he thought could’ve turned into JMU’s most successful season under his watch. JMU picked up 10 wins in its final 13 games, which included a sweep of Quinnipiac - an NCAA tournament team the season before - as well as a mid-week win at Big Ten opponent Maryland in the last contest of the campaign.

Each year Ikenberry has led the Dukes they’ve improved on their record from the previous year – going 24-31 in his first season, 24-27 the next, reaching .500 at 26-26 in 2018 and then 31-26 a year ago.

“I thought we had a chance to be special in a lot of different ways this past year,” Ikenberry said. “We were winning games that I thought we weren’t playing great baseball in, and as a coach you always want to win but at the same time when you know you’re not playing your best baseball you look deeper at the what-ifs and what that could do to our team. So I could see it unfolding. And if we were going to peak at the right time, I was envisioning we could carry it on through the postseason.”

Bourne said he thinks Ikenberry has represented JMU extremely well the last five years, assembled a smart coaching staff, recruited at a high level, and upped the academic performance of the baseball squad.

He added he and Ikenberry have similar on-field aspirations to increase the success of the program.

JMU has only earned a spot in an NCAA regional three times since 2000. Under Ikenberry, the Dukes have played in the Colonial Athletic Association tournament twice.

“I do,” Bourne said when asked whether or not he thinks Ikenberry can lead JMU to accomplish those feats more regularly. “I think they’re doing a better job building synergy with the team and being able to recruit student-athletes at the highest level of our league. And our goal is to compete for and win a championship in the CAA. We expect to do that on a basis of at least every four years. … And given the way that they’re resourced and the facilities we have at JMU, we see no reason why that shouldn’t happen.”

And Bourne said he’d like Ikenberry to show steps toward achieving those goals next spring before pondering a longer extension.

“I think we have to prove at this point that we can continue to make progress toward our ultimate goal of winning a [CAA] championship,” Bourne said. “That’s very important to us and I hold all of our coaches in our program to that standard, and I wouldn’t make an exception for baseball. Their ability to compete and win is as high as any program. … We’ll see how this year goes, and if we have a good year and do well we’ll consider a multiple-year extension.”

Ikenberry said: “It’s not the first time I’ve been on a one-year contract. And like last year, I knew I was on a one-year contract, but I don’t think about it that way. I think of it as how can I better this program, this team, this community and make JMU baseball a great place to play and for us to win a CAA championship.

“I’m excited I get the opportunity to coach the game I love at a school that’s awesome and enjoy a community that’s great.”

Last year under Ikenberry’s tutelage, the program produced four Major League Baseball Draft picks – the most the school produced in any year since 2003.

JMU initially hired Ikenberry in the summer of 2015, after he had a successful run in the same role at Virginia Military Institute, racking up 282 wins - the most in VMI history.