FORTVILLE — Fresh off yet another big win, the Indiana Shockwaves-Perry team went back to their Florida hotel and decided to watch the game they had just completed.
The game, part of the USA Elite Select World Fastpitch Championships in Viera, Florida, was played on the USSSA Pride’s field, staffed with a full announcing crew and broadcast via live stream.
The Shockwaves didn’t like what they saw when they watched their own handiwork. The announcers weren’t showing the team from Indiana much respect, despite piling on win after win.
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“When we played on the Pride’s field, the big stadium, we watched the game after it was over,” outfielder Riley Hasseld said. “We were listening to the announcers, like, ‘What they heck? They are being so rude.’ We’re good. We know we’re good, but no one else knows that we’re that good. They kept saying that we’re running off the high of our big upsets, and it’s just … no, we’re better than them. It’s nice to be able to prove to everyone that we are that good.
“We were such underdogs. No one believed that we would even make it to the final four.”
The Shockwaves-Perry team took things even farther. After dropping their opening game of pool play, they didn’t lose again during the event. They picked up seven wins over a four day span, topping teams from Georgia, Texas, Minnesota and Alabama.
The supposed underdogs from Indiana topped an impressive Impact Gold-Jazz team, 3-2, in the 16U championship game on June 29, becoming the first team ever from Indiana to win the event and finishing 9-1 overall.
“Considering that it’s all these southern teams, and you think oh, southern softball, that’s where it’s at, Midwest is not as good … Just being that team, the first Indiana team to win that tournament, it was really big to say we didn’t just get lucky to win one game,” shortstop Sydnee Perry said. “We beat several good teams to get to where we were.”
The travel team featured three players from Hancock County in the championship run — Perry and Hasseld from Mt. Vernon, and Sam Kihega from Greenfield-Central. The Florida victory wasn’t the first national championship that group won with the Shockwaves-Perry team, though.
Many members of the Shockwaves have been playing together for more than a decade. Perry’s father, Walt, started coaching her when she was just 6 years old. Hasseld joined up a year later, as did some other current members of the squad.
The Shockwaves-Perry team was officially created five years ago, when the majority of the group was 12 years old. They’ve won four national championships in those five years.
That started in the first year, in 2015, with a National Softball Association A National Championship in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Sydnee Perry and Emma Summers, now a first-team all-state pitcher for Brown County High School, were pitching for the team back then.
“There are different levels of what we did,” Walt Perry said. “That was pretty good for us to start it, at NSA level.”
They were Triple Crown Sports National Champions a year later, a higher level than NSA. That was a tournament win in Atlanta, Georgia, during a season in which they compiled a 108-8-6 record. They finished third a year later, and in 2018 won another TCS National Championship.
The group decided last fall to try to qualify for the World Fastpitch Championships.
“We knew we could compete, but it was another step. You had some big programs,” Walt Perry said. “You had the OC Batbusters from California in the finals, the Impact Gold, who we beat, from Houston, Texas. Their shortstop is a UCLA commit. I think their third baseman is a Texas A&M commit. There was another group called the Hotshots out of Texas, with an LSU commit. You see all these big-time girls … I’ve got a lot of D1 players, but they are a smaller level of D1.”
As the 2019 tournament progressed, people kept questioning how a team from Indiana was beating teams with supposedly better talent, with players committed to bigger schools.
The answer is pretty simple. The Shockwaves-Perry team isn’t like most travel teams out there. They’ve kept their core together for so long, and they have grown accustomed to winning together as a team.
“They kept asking me down there, ‘how do you guys compete with these teams like this?’ I think that’s where being together so long … our pitching was good, you watch us play defense and I’d put us up against anybody,” Walt Perry said. “We play as a team. A lot of travel teams switch every couple of years, players are in and out. I think that’s what helps us compete against more talented, they would say, players. After that, I know we can play with anybody. That gave us a lot of good recognition.”
That’s not to say that things haven’t changed over the years. Hasseld used to bat right-handed. She’s now a lefty. Perry used to pitch. She’s now a shortstop.
But regardless of what’s changed, the bond they’ve developed hasn’t done anything except grow stronger.
“I think the fact that we’ve been together so long — most teams don’t have that,” Hasseld said. “They just pick the best out of the state or a region. We’ve just developed ourselves to get to that level. We just play so well together, I think it makes us so much better than those teams.”
“I think it’s really cool, especially considering none of us are these big-time program commits or anything like that,” Sydnee Perry said. “Some of these people are going to UCLA, all these big schools. As a group, we do so much better than some of these big-time kids playing together. Even though we’re not a big name, we’ve played against big names. Having a team like that you could count on is just an awesome feeling to have.”
They’ve still got Summers in the circle. She threw five innings against Impact Gold-Jazz in the championship game, allowing just one run against a team with five major D1 commits and that won two different national titles last year. Claire Norred, a pitcher from Tipton High School, picked up the save in that game.
That win improved the team to 53-3-1 for the season, but they weren’t done there.
They traveled back to Indiana for the Midwest Firecracker Softball Showcase from July 4 through 7, one of the bigger Midwest tournaments that many colleges attend for recruiting purposes. They won that, too.
They competed in the Ohio Stingray Showcase in Columbus, Ohio, from July 12 through 14. They finished that event with a 5-1 record, losing to the same team that beat them in last year’s championship game, the 18U Ohio Hawks. That brings the Shockwaves record to 67-4-1 on the travel season.
Although they don’t have the major D1 commits, the Shockwaves-Perry group does boast five all-state players. Summers made the first team in 2019 after compiling a 17-3 record with a 0.49 ERA and 249 strikeouts to just 11 walks. Norred made the second team with a 16-3 record, 1.64 ERA, 159 strikeouts and 44 walks. Three players — Sydnee Perry, Bailey Caylor from Tipton and Macee Roberts from Franklin Central — earned third team nods.
Six of the Shockwaves-Perry players hit .400 or better for their high school teams this season. The group combined for more than 25 home runs and for well over 200 RBIs this spring. Eight of them have verbally committed to play at the next level.
They’ve grown together, and they’ve learned to win, a lot, together. They’ll try to do even more of that this weekend, as they are in Spartansburg, South Carolina for the USA Softball JO Cup.
“There’s bigger organizations than us in Indiana and the surrounding areas,” Walt Perry said. “We’ve lost a couple kids to those big programs, but these girls are proud of staying with the Indiana Shockwaves. They’ve taken pride in being part of this, now. They know we can win. I think they look at it that it’s a bigger accomplishment doing it when you’re this smaller program and you can compete with these big programs.”
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Name;High school;College choice
Sydnee Perry;Mt. Vernon;University of Indianapolis
Riley Hasseld;Mt. Vernon;Undecided
Emma Summers;Brown County;Wright State
Claire Norred;Tipton;Northern Illinois
Bailey Caylor;Tipton;Southern Illinois
Jorja Hudson;Seeger Memorial;Western Illinois
Olivia Latimer;Fishers;Hillsdale College
Chloe Tragesser;Noblesville;Indiana Wesleyan
Marah Wood;Brownsburg;University of Evansville
Macee Roberts;Franklin Central;Undecided
Megan Nichols;Carmel;Undecided
Sidney Jones;Avon;Undecided
Coaching staff
Head Coach – Walt Perry
Assistant Coaches – Doug Caylor, Troy Summers
Recruiting Coordinator – Brad Hasseld
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The Indiana-Shockwaves Perry team has now won four national championships at three different levels in the five years the team has competed.
2015 NSA A National Championship
2016 TCS National Championship
2018 TCS National Championship
2019 USA Elite Select World Fastpitch Championship
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