Fresh off yet another big win, the Indiana Shockwaves-Perry team went back to its Florida hotel and decided to watch the game it 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.
“They were not the nicest,” pitcher Emma Summers said. “It was for sure motivation. The kept saying that we were riding a high off an upset. It wasn’t a high, and it wasn’t an upset because we’re actually good.”
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.
“Most of the teams were from Georgia, Florida and there were several Texas team,” Summers said. “There was maybe one other Midwestern team, and that’s probably why they thought we weren’t as good.”
Summers, who will be a senior at Brown County, split time in the circle with Claire Norred from Tipton. Summers went 4-0 with a 1.04 ERA and 27 strikeouts in 33.2 innings for the tournament in earning MVP honors.
“It’s always exciting just to know that all the hard work you and your team put into something big like that paid off,” Summers said.
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.
Summers played with the team when it won national titles in 2015 and 2016. She played with a different team in 2017, and the Shockwaves did not win that year. Summers then returned to the Shockwaves last year, and they’ve gone back-to-back for the second time in five years.
Walt Perry, an assistant coach at Mt. Vernon (Fortville), started coaching them at a young age. The Shockwaves-Perry team officially was created five years ago, when the majority of the group was 12 years old.
That started in the first year, in 2015, with a National Softball Association A National Championship in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Perry’s daughter Sydnee and Summers 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. It has kept its core together for so long, and 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.”
The bond they’ve developed hasn’t done anything except grow stronger.
While Sydnee Perry now plays shortstop, the Shockwaves still have 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 Division-I commits and that won two different national titles last year. Norred picked up the save in that game.
That win improved them 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 4-7, 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 12-14. 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 for the Eagles. Norred made the second team with a 16-3 record, 1.64 ERA, 159 strikeouts and 44 walks. Three players — Sydnee Perry from Mt. Vernon, 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. Summers, who originally had committed to Loyola (Chicago), switched to Wright State after the Loyola coach’s contract was not renewed.
“There was a coaching change, so I decided that it would just be better to rethink my commitment,” Summers said.
They’ve grown together, and they’ve learned to win, a lot, together.
“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.”
Next month, Summers will begin her senior year at Brown County. The Eagles won their first 17 games this spring, but lost four of their last six, including a 3-0 decision to Northview in the sectional.
“It was disappointing,” Summers said. “You start out the season 17-0, and you don’t lose very many games at all and then you lose in the first round of the sectional. It’s not the way I planned on ending the season the past three years, and it’s not the way I plan on ending senior season.”
