Derek Schultz: Dirtyard dominance

The recently completed Olympics displayed plenty of sports that many didn’t realize were sports. Olympic Breaking, a breakdancing competition, made its debut in 2024, with over a dozen countries sending competitors to Paris. Other oddities, such as the rope climb (like in your grade school gym class) or backyard contests like tug-of-war and croquet, have also been contested in past summer games.

While reaching the world stage of the Olympics has yet to happen for wiffle ball, America’s beloved backyard pastime, a group of south-siders have put Indianapolis among the nation’s best in the sport.

Humble origins

Nationwide wiffle ball relevance wasn’t the plan a decade ago for Brendan Dudas. After graduating as an all-county baseball player and four-year letterman at Perry Meridian High School in 2014, Dudas was merely trying to prolong his favorite childhood activity into his college years with his baseball brethren at the University of Indianapolis.

“I formed the league right there in my dorm,” Dudas said. “Being the person that goes over the top in everything I do, I told the rest of the guys I wanted to get official with it—build teams, create a website, [track] stats—you know, all that stuff.”

Dudas’ wiffle ball league began in 2015 with four teams and totaled 19 players, many of whom were Perry Meridian or UIndy teammates of his. At first, the league, then known as Indy Southside Wiffle Ball (ISWB), was casual. Teams would go shirts and skins, like a pickup basketball game at the playground, and held impromptu contests in the spacious backyard of Dudas’ childhood home off Bluff Road, about 5 miles south of Lucas Oil Stadium.

“We ended up making some matching shirts and put up a chain-link fence [around the field],” Dudas said. “At the time, we thought we were serious about it.”

College-age guys tooled around “The Dirtyard”—the name affectionately bestowed upon Dudas’ backyard venue—every spring and summer weekend those first few years. Some, like Dudas, took it more seriously than others, but the ISWB website and social media presence eventually attracted outsiders who in.

“One day, this team called the 8 Balls came to play with a guy named Mike Speek and his son, Mike Jr. We later found out Mike Sr. had been playing competitive wiffle ball since the 1990s. These guys show up with full jerseys, and they’re stretching to get ready for the games,” Dudas said. “They kicked our asses for two straight years.”

The Speeks’ arrival, and a 33-0 loss in ISWB’s first ever foray into the National Wiffle League Association (NWLA) tournament, ended up being a turning point for the league, ending the backyard tomfoolery and turning Dudas and his remaining cohorts into committed, full-fledged wiffle-ballers.

The rise of Circle City Wiffle Ball

By the next summer, bare-chested wiffle ball was officially a thing of the past. Uniforms were purchased, player recruitment and organized practices began, and what was once a hobby became an obsession for Dudas and his comrades.

Part of that talent influx was Will Smithey, another UIndy Greyhound with an insatiable competitive streak, who brought in his own throwing and weights regimen. Reid Werner, a fellow 2017 addition, immediately became one of the league’s top two-way players, turning into Indy’s pitching ace in the national tournaments.

Speaking of pitching, former UIndy hurler Myc Witty’s pitches have been clocked at over 100 miles per hour—at a 48-1/2-feet mound distance, that’s the equivalent of 125 mph for batter reaction time—and most of the team’s pitchers began hovering in the 85-90 mph range. Rudy Lyon, now a veteran on the team’s national entry and a deputy commissioner to Dudas, was also added to the mix. He joined the league after moving to Indiana and finding it on a Google search, continuing to hone the wiffle ball skills he had developed in Pennsylvania.

Several seasons after being blown off the field in the NWLA tournament, a newly revamped Indy team wanted to prove it belonged with the nation’s best. Rocking 1990s-era Pacers’ FloJo inspired jerseys and a new league name, Circle City Wiffle (CCW) returned to the NWLA tournament to score a top 10 national finish in 2019.

“We went toe-to-toe with the national runner-up twice, and Austin Church hit a home run to beat the three-time NWLA champions in an elimination game,” said Lyon, whose debut in national competition came on that breakthrough team.

“That was the tournament and the moment when the switch flipped for us,” Lyon said. “We finally earned our respect,” added Dudas, “Our entire league had stepped up.”

The progress continued over the next several years, culminating in CCW’s perfect 7-0 run in the 2022 NWLA tournament to earn the right to call themselves national champions. Werner and Smithey shared co-MVP honors for the tournament, with the latter launching a walk-off home run in the decisive game. Smithey was also named the NWLA national player of the year, an honor he repeated in 2023.

The Dirtyard

In the shirts-and-skins years, the only “amenities” for The Dirtyard were some chalk lines and a chain-link home run fence. However, in yet another area where the addition of the Speek family raised the league’s ceiling, The Dirtyard has been slowly transformed into a bona fide wiffle ball field of dreams. Several years ago, Speek Sr., an executive with Amerifence, helped the league construct a majestic home run fence, complete with outfield party decks for viewing. The guys later installed an LED board into the left-field wall. The Dirtyard also includes lights for night games, a batting cage on the other side of the first-base line, and even a broadcast perch behind home plate for game streams.

The Dirtyard’s bells and whistles have turned it into one of the most well-known wiffle ball locales in the country: a rarified air that includes incredible backyard constructions like Little Fenway in Vermont. It has hosted both the 2021 and 2022 NWLA tournaments, with the latter being Indy’s championship breakthrough.

Along with the field, CCW’s rise to national prominence has led to a huge social media following, as the league has amassed over 100,000 followers and nearly 3 million likes on TikTok, while boasting several more thousand subscribers for wiffle ball content on its Twitch and YouTube channels. ESPN even featured Smithey and Dudas as part of their “ESPN 8: The Ocho” spoof last August, shoe-horning in some wiffle ball action to a national audience along with cornhole, table hockey, tractor pulling and foot golf.

Love of the game

Even with the championships, TikTok fans, and ESPN love, the core Circle City Wiffle group keeps coming back to the south side each summer. So many things have changed—jobs, homes, wives, kids—but the game and camaraderie remain the same.

“There just hasn’t been anything for me like playing wiffle ball,” said Smithey, a data analyst by day and a wiffle ball MVP by night. “Even coming out of competitive baseball, wiffle ball is my favorite thing that I’ve ever done. I’ll play until I can’t [physically] do it any longer.”

“It might be for washed-up athletes, some more washed up than others, but it is a great community,” said Lyon, who works as an event coordinator along with his CCW leadership duties.

Dudas, a self-professed sports nut, has continued his baseball path, coaching and teaching at Southport High School. He and his wife, Maddie, formally adopted two of their nephews several years ago, but even with his busy family and professional life, the addiction of smacking a plastic wiffle ball with a skinny yellow bat is one he just can’t quit.

“It’s crazy to think we started out doing this as 12-year-olds, and now guys are bringing their wives and their kids to come out and watch,” Dudas said.

“It’s hard to imagine my summer without wiffle ball or even going a week without going to that field.”•

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From Peyton Manning’s peak with the Colts to the Pacers’ most recent roster makeover, Schultz has talked about it all as a sports personality in Indianapolis for more than 15 years. Besides his written work with IBJ, he’s active in podcasting and show hosting.