Illinois vs. Michigan State Series Represents More Than Softball

When Illinois and Michigan State meet on Friday to open their conference series, there will be more at play than just two Big 10 programs jockeying for position in the conference standings.

The series marks the first time that two Black female head softball coaches will face off in Big 10 play, and it is believed to be the first time such a matchup takes place at the Power 5 level. Illinois head coach Tyra Perry and Michigan State head coach Sharonda McDonald Kelley are two of the three Black female head coaches across all Power 5 softball programs.

Perry was the first Black head coach in Big Ten softball history when she was hired in the summer of 2015. McDonald Kelley took over the reins of Michigan State’s program last summer. Both are accomplished coaches with achievements during their careers at every level, and both appreciate the magnitude of what facing off against one another represents.

“So much pride,” Perry said, describing her feelings on the historic matchup. “I had a similar feeling playing against Clarisa (Crowell, Penn State’s head coach) last year, you know, with her being a Pacific Islander. I’m proud of the Big 10 for taking the lead and showing the way in that regard. I have the utmost respect for Sharonda, and when she landed her job at Campbell, then going on to Michigan State and gotten her feet on the ground in the P5 realm, I’ve just been so proud of everything that she’s doing over there.”

In total, seventeen Division 1 college softball programs are currently led by Black female head coaches. Of those seventeen, eight have a tie to the Big Ten – five who played for Big 10 programs and a former assistant in the league, plus Perry and McDonald Kelley –  so it’s fitting that it’s in this league that this historic matchup happens.

“The Big 10 has served as a platform, to give us an opportunity to have this moment and hopefully more moments in the future with more with more diversity coming in,” Perry said. “There are several women who played in the Big 10 and are now head coaches – Kiki Stokes, MJ Knighten, Tori Tyson – and I could just keep saying names. It is definitely an accurate statement [to give credit to the conference].”

When Perry began her career in softball, Black female head coaches were not a common thing. As a player at LSU in the late 1990s, even Black softball players were rare. Perry was a trailblazer in that category, much as she is in the coaching profession. That trailblazer moniker, the task of paving the way for others to follow is not something that she set out to do, but it’s something that she has embraced and made her own along the way.

“I was given access, a foot in the door, twenty-years ago by Joe Dean Jr. and Neal Berte (at Birmingham-Southern College),” Perry noted. “And I had limited qualifications and I was right out of college. But I used that platform to learn the business and to grow, and to become a gatekeeper to help others learn and to point them in the right direction. So that when opportunities come along, I was able to help someone else know ‘connect yourself to this’ or ‘make sure you do that’ and to actively gather that information and spread the news to others. I’ve learned more about how business works, how the world works over the years; you have to have access and somebody has to kind-of let you in or see something in you.

“And I think definitely the horizons have broadened,” Perry added. “At one point, it was like ‘here’s this one person that I saw this one time’, and now that’s different. A lot of it does have to do with more people of color playing the sport, right? And I could just keep saying names and more names, and before, you had like two names. Or you walk into a room in the diversity caucus at the NFCA convention and in the past, you might know everyone in the room. Now, you can meet someone different, someone new, because it has evolved into that and the landscape has expanded.”

McDonald Kelley was a handful of years behind Perry in their respective playing careers, which meant she joined the coaching ranks after Perry had already begun to break some of the pre-existing barriers. In fact, Perry’s is the name that even McDonald Kelley lists as who she looked to as the model to follow as a Black feamle in the coaching world, the proverbial ship setting the course.

Now in a similar position herself, one of being a role model; trailblazer; and a figurehead looked up to by other Black females who want to enter the coaching profession, McDonald Kelley, like Perry years earlier, stands ready to help continue paving the way.

“Tyra was that for me,” McDonald Kelley said. “I got to watch her do it. And Trena [Prater], when she was at Hampton and Buffalo. I watched them do it, and I’m friends with them so that really helped. But it’s a whole different level of eyes on you in the Power Five, and I think I had grown enough at Campbell to understand to not put that level of pressure on *myself*, but I think what has moved me to tears multiple times – literal tears – is how the Black community [at Michigan State] immediately rallied around me. It was messages, calls, people who said ‘I’ve never been to softball but I saw you got hired and we want this for you.’ It feels like a big hug from an entire community, and I feel like it has nothing to do with me – I’m just the fortunate one, I’ve been blessed and favored to be in this position.”

“At first, it felt very weighty,” the Spartans’ leader added. “Especially when I first got into coaching; then, I think as I went along, through the years at Campbell, I figured out that I just need to be myself. As a woman in general, then as a Black woman, you only get so many chances. You have to make the most of it and it felt like I couldn’t mess up… since then, that feeling of weightiness has gone away; I feel like I can just be myself. There is a community that I get to represent, a community that would still be proud of me no matter what. The successes that have come along with that, I’m just so fortunate to be able to experience. It’s never been about me.”