Jacksonville State’s softball team beat Alabama State 13-1 in five innings on Wednesday night in Montgomery, giving coach Jana McGinnis her 1,000th career victory.

McGinnis, a Spring Garden native in her 30th season coaching at her college alma mater, is one of just 12 active college coaches with 1,000 victories. With Oklahoma’s Pat Gasso and USC-Upstate’s Chris Hawkins, she is among only three who have recorded all 1,000 at one school.

“When we would go to these tournaments, people would go, ‘I know you’re approaching 1,000 wins.’ But I wouldn’t let myself think about it,” McGinnis told The Anniston Star. “Pat Murphy, the Alabama coach, called and he said, ‘Hey, good luck, I know you’re approaching 1,000. No pressure.’ Well, I just took it like, it’s in the reach. Honestly, I don’t focus on that. I was preparing for (ASUN conference rival) Bellarmine and using this game as preparation.”

Jacksonville State (16-9) scored three runs in the third and six in the fourth to put Wednesday’s game away, and began the countdown to the postgame celebration. Pitcher Jaliyah Holmes struck out 10 and allowed just three hits in four shutout innings, while Emma Jones drove in five runs with a double and a triple as JSU won by run rule.

McGinnis, a seven-time conference coach of the year at JSU, was a two-time all-conference guard in basketball for the Gamecocks in the early 1990s. Then known as Jana Bright, she starred on the court alongside her twin sister Dana and the two later had their jerseys retired by the school.

After a year as a basketball graduate assistant at JSU and two seasons as girls basketball coach at Cherokee County High School — where she won a state championship in 1993 — she took over the Gamecocks softball program prior to the 1994 season. Her twin sister — now Dana Bright Austin — was hired as JSU’s women’s basketball coach on the same day, and coached at the school for 10 seasons.