The MSR first spoke by phone with Tyra Perry, the Illinois head softball coach, during the pandemic shutdown of 2020. At the time, she was the Big Ten’s only Black softball head coach.
“I think we were starting to make our move,” Perry said. “I definitely had a group that wanted to win.”
Since then, Sharonda McDonald-Kelley was hired at Michigan State. The two made history in April 2023 when their squads faced each other in the conference’s first-ever matchup between two Black head coaches. Along with McDonald-Kelley, Hawaiian native Clarisa Crowell is in her sixth season at Penn State; Kelly Inouye-Perez, who was hired at UCLA in 2007, is Asian; and Ohio State’s Kirin Kumar, hired in 2024, round out the Big Ten’s softball coaches of color.
“The Big Ten has the most Black and Brown coaches,” Perry said during the MSR’s first face-to-face interview with her, following the Illini’s 14-6 victory at Minnesota on March 28.
“Outside of HBCUs, there’s very few of us, and we’re all in the Big Ten,” she added.
Perry played high school and college softball in her native Louisiana. She played two seasons at Nicholls State, then followed her head coach to LSU, which was launching a new softball program. Perry twice led her team in batting, earned a spot on the SEC All-Tournament team in her first season and was a two-time SEC Academic Honor Roll member.
She earned two degrees from LSU, a bachelor’s in kinesiology in 1997 and a master’s in sports administration in 1998.
Perry admitted she once considered a medical career. “I actually was in nursing,” she recalled. “I was one class away from completing all my pre-reqs at Nicholls State.” When her head coach asked her to transfer, Perry initially resisted. “I wanted to finish up and go to nursing school. She ended up talking to me about transferring, and LSU was 30 minutes away from home. I just decided to change, kinesiology took all of my credits. I ended up loving it, and my focus went on coaching.”
Perry’s coaching career began at Birmingham Southern from 2001 to 2007, where she helped start the school’s softball program, followed by stints at Western Kentucky from 2008 to 2013, Ball State from 2016 to 2018, and Illinois since 2018, now in her seventh season. She has been a head coach at every stop.
This season Perry will reach 300 wins at Illinois. Earlier this year she notched her 700th career win over Providence in February. But she said what gives her the greatest joy is building lasting relationships.
“If a coach answers something other than the people, I would check them,” Perry said. “It’s the people. I love these young women. I’ve been in it long enough to where I’ve been to weddings and baby showers, and I just have so much joy when I see a former player and their family walk up and their kids are calling me ‘Auntie Tyra.’ Since I don’t have my own kids, I absolutely love it. It’s awesome to see these young women as part of my extended family.”
The recent Illinois-Minnesota three-game series saw each team with only two Black players, a reminder that on-field diversity in the sport still has a long way to go.
“Some of it I think is economics,” Perry said. “You’d spend a lot of money in travel ball. The other part is that if I grew up here, it would be tough for me to choose an outdoor sport with the weather issues. I grew up in the South where we were playing outside and it was sunny.”
Temperatures that day were in the 30s and 40s.
“I think regionally it’s tough, but some things have changed because there are more indoor facilities,” she said. “Now softball is a full-ride sport… You can have up to 25 full scholarships.”
Finally, Perry is not the only softball coach in the family. Her sister, Brittany Williams, is the head softball coach at Southern University, an HBCU.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader response at challman@spokesman-recorder.com.