Belle and the Ball

SwingRX Golf Performance is proud to bring you this week's Front Row Feature.
For more information, visit https://SwingRXGolf.com.

- - -

"The ball is spherical, hard and white."

That sentence, taken verbatim from the official field hockey rule book, doesn't quite do this particular piece of sports equipment justice.

Go ahead. Pick up the ball. Toss it in the air. Check it out for yourself.

Larger than a pool ball. Isabelle Perese

Heavier than a baseball.

You'll likely agree: There's a lot more to the field hockey ball than those seven simple words can encapsulate.

Maybe the description should be updated this way: "The ball is spherical, EXTREMELY HARD and white."

Nah, that's a decent start, but it still doesn't tell the entire story.

Perhaps something like this: "The ball is spherical, EXTREMELY HARD and white and can travel around 100 miles per hour."

Yes, you read that right. Triple digits.

It begs the question: Who on earth would want to willingly throw their body in front of such an object even once, let alone over and over and over again?

- - -

Meet Isabelle Perese.

The fifth-year senior goalkeeper for the Miami University field hockey team does exactly that on a regular basis…and does it as well as anyone in the nation.

Check out her bio:

All-MAC First Team. Goalkeeper of the Year. First-Team All-Region. All-American. Miami's all-time leader in shutouts. Nation's leader in save percentage. Started every game. Miami Female Co-Athlete of the Year.

(And that's just the 2022-23 section!!)

Most recently, Perese became the program's all-time leader in minutes played, eclipsing the 5,900-minute mark and passing Sarah Mueller (who happened to be her first-ever goalkeeper coach as a teenager) in the Miami record book.

5,900 minutes: That's the equivalent of 98 hours of game time (or more than four 24-hour days) patrolling the RedHawks' cage.

But more importantly than any individual honor or statistic, Perese heads into the final regular-season game of her illustrious career Friday afternoon hoping to help the Red and White win yet another championship.

Isabelle Perese

It's familiar territory for the RedHawks…and their star goalie.

A victory Friday would give Miami its seventh-straight MAC regular-season crown and assure the RedHawks of the No. 1 seed in next week's MAC Tournament, where they'll attempt to chase a sixth-consecutive championship in that event.

Winning trophies is all Perese has known at Miami, and she hopes to keep that string going over the next week and a half.

"The target gets bigger every year, so every year it feels like more of an accomplishment," Perese said.

"Each year has been very unique with its own adversity and obstacles to overcome, so I think each year the [titles] feel a little bit better, and each year they get a little bit tougher!"

Prevailing in the MAC Tournament would give Miami an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament for the seventh year in a row, a streak only Michigan and North Carolina can currently match. It's the kind of sustained success Perese hoped for when she committed to play for Iñako Puzo's program.

"Ultimately, she thought she could make a difference here," her father Hanson Perese said.

Has she ever.

- - -

Isabelle Perese has never preferred the easy, simple route. In anything.

When it came time as a fifth grader to pick an instrument to play in the school orchestra, Perese chose the string bass. Even if it was about as tall as she was.

"I have a history of picking what I think is the most difficult thing or the biggest thing or whatever is going to cause the most chaos," Perese smiled.

"If there's a way to make waves or challenge myself, I try to."

That mindset led Perese to move on from a sport she had excelled at for most of her life —soccer— after middle school and give field hockey a try.

"I had gotten to the point in soccer, where I remember thinking, 'You know what? I don't get nervous before games anymore.'

"I felt pretty settled and confident in the skills, and I was like, 'Do I really want to feel settled when I'm 14? Am I really pushing myself? Is this enough of a challenge?'

"It wasn't that I was phenomenal at it; I just got really comfortable. And I thought, 'What about making a leap?' [So I decided] to change gears and do something completely different."

Perese decided to follow in her older sister Hailey's footsteps, joining the Thomas Worthington High School team. "I didn't want to be exactly like her, so I was like, 'I'll do something different', and the second I started playing field hockey, I chose goalie," Perese recounted.

"I realized I was able to transfer my skills from soccer; although it was a big jump, I think I cheated it a bit because I could use my feet and I didn't have to really learn how to stickhandle."

The rest is history.

Perese won a trio of state titles with Thomas Worthington, and Puzo was ecstatic when the highly-coveted recruit agreed to become a RedHawk. "The first time she put the pads on…everyone knew that she was going to be great," Puzo said. "We were lucky that she decided to come here."

Isabelle Perese

Perese was drawn to not only the opportunity Miami Field Hockey offered, but also the chance to study Inclusive Special Education in Miami's College of Education, Health and Society.

"The education program was definitely a huge part," said Perese, a multi-year Academic All-MAC honoree. "My parents always said, 'You have to love the school if field hockey was taken away from you. If you got injured or decided not to play, you have to be happy there just being a student, just as much as you are with hockey.

"[Miami] checked that box…

"I feel fortunate because so many people come into college having no idea what they're going to do…I've known since seventh grade that I wanted to do special education. I got the opportunity to volunteer in the resource rooms in my middle school and get introduced to that side of education, which really wasn't that prevalent in my elementary school.

"I said, 'Oh, this is phenomenal, and I feel like they need so much more help and more resources than what they're getting right now.' So it was a no-brainer what I was going to study…

"It's been a lot of work, but it's also been super-rewarding."

- - -

After leading Miami to an opening-round win in each of the last two national tournaments, Perese decided to come back for her super-senior season in 2023 because she felt there was still unfinished business in Oxford.

Puzo was thrilled to get that news. "To have someone that is an All-American and is willing to play an extra year for Miami, it says a lot about her character and her loyalty to Miami and to the program," he said. Isabelle Perese Senior Day 2022

"I am so hyper-competitive that I don't think I could ever walk away from the sport earlier than basically being made to," Perese explained. "To me, there was more to achieve and more to accomplish, especially as a team.

"We make steps each year: First we win the MAC, now that's the standard—great.

"Now we've been winning first-round games, so that's the standard—great. Anything less than that would be a disappointment.

"We were close against Michigan in 2021 [leading the nation's No. 3 team on the road in the final minutes]. We were so close against Northwestern in 2022 [taking the defending national champ to double overtime and then a shootout, again on the road]…

"To me, the job wasn't done."

That's why, on the first day of practice this August, Perese could be found back on Miami's home turf, honing her craft and preparing for one last special season (despite having celebrated Senior Day 10 months earlier).

Step. Catch. Repeat. Step. Catch. Repeat.

Isabelle Perese

Just Belle and the ball.

No drill is too routine, even for an All-American. Nothing is too fundamental to rehearse, even for the nation's leader in save percentage.

Step. Catch. Repeat. Step. Catch. Repeat.

"I don't pay attention to how little a detail may seem. It's huge in my mind," she said later. "I have to hit my marks on everything. In my mind, I have to hit every catch. Because if it's that basic, I should be 100 percent perfect on it.

"Then I know when I'm hitting every catch, I'm like, 'Okay, I reached that benchmark. What can we do next?'

"One of the things my dad always said is, 'You have to practice every single day like you're fighting for your position.' So I try to treat every ball and every drill that way."

"The will to practice should be as great as the will to win, and for her, it is," said Hanson Perese. "She has a singular mindset. When the other team scores, she takes it personally.

Isabelle Perese in NCAA Tournament

"It's no different than if you were protecting your family and your house: If somebody comes at three in the morning and you hear a noise, you're going to get up. If you're married or have kids, you're going to keep them behind you and you go to meet the challenge.

"Same thing here: 'It's my house. It's my goal. It's our field. If you score on me, I'm going to do the best I can for you not to score again.'"

Puzo appreciates his veteran goalkeeper's attention to the smallest nuances of a position she already excels at. "Belle is a player that improves every day," he said. "She improved when she was 14, and today she's still improving.

"We say all the time: After practice, you're going to get worse or you're going to get better. You're not going to be the same.

"She's the kind of athlete that every day gets better. Some days it's a big step. Some days it's a small step. But it's always in the right direction."

- - -

An Isabelle Perese highlight reel doesn't look all that different from a good old-fashioned game of Twister, with appendages flying every which-way.

But instead of a spinner reading 'right foot on blue' or 'left hand – yellow', Miami fans might see a flurry like this:

Left-footed kick save. Split save. Diving right-handed stick save.

And when all else fails?

"I GO! I GO!" Here comes Perese in an all-out sprawl on top of the ball to smother an opponent's scoring chance.

"I think you have to see her playing to understand how good she is," said Puzo. "With her reaction time, it's like she can read the game one second before the play happens, and that one second gives her an advantage to make the save.

"I don't think there are stats that can really give you the representation of how good she is."

Of course, making those saves is not always fun, especially at point-blank range. "On impact – very painful," Perese admitted. "It depends where it hits you…I've gotten cracked in the ankle a fair amount of times, and it's pretty brutal."

But Belle will never stop throwing every inch of her frame in front of the ball. Even if she understands why some people might think a goalie 'has to be just a little bit crazy on the inside' to do that on a regular basis. Isabelle Perese and a field hockey ball

"It's weird to think about," she said. "This [ball] touching a part of my body and going away from the cage is the best feeling ever. And this going past a part of my body into the cage is the worst feeling ever.

"That's weird that this little thing would have a power…it makes or breaks everything."

According to Perese, sometimes that spherical, hard white object can be the bane of her existence.

More often, it's the symbol of her success.

But most of the time, if Belle is in Miami's cage, the ball is not.

And that's exactly how the RedHawks like it.

Find more Front Row Features at: MiamiRedHawks.com/FrontRowFeatures

- - -

Isabelle Perese and the RedHawks host Ball State (and celebrate Senior Day) Friday, Oct. 27 at 3 p.m. with a MAC title on the line. Admission is free. Miami returns to action Nov. 3-4 for the MAC Tournament in Oxford; postseason ticket information will be available soon.

Related News

Players Mentioned

Isabelle Perese

Related Videos