What a Contrast

With the advent of e-mail, internet, wide-acceptance of homeschooling in general, and the welcoming of homeschoolers into college and the military today, those of you in your beginning or early years of homeschool sports might want to read this article to appreciate what we pioneers didn't have back then.

Where We Were Back in the 90s

I'm far from being the originator of homeschool sports, many started before me, but I can still remember my very first "sports day" back in the early nineties. My only regret was to be so isolated from the early pioneers who were already established and were blazing the trails. Since I can only speak of the Virginia happenings back then, I want to acknowledge the Beach Breakers (Virginia Beach) for being the pioneers for our state. I admired them from a far (more like 5 hours away) and they inspired me to get my first sports program up and running. 16 years later and 2,000 coached games later, I am still here, and so are the Breakers. And let's not forget those pioneers who had already figured out how to put tournaments together, Tim Flatt, Thomas Scheino, Pascal Redfern and others, while most of us were just cutting our teeth in the sports movement.

To all of you other early pioneers in the other states, I say "thank-you" as well, and it is one of the goals of HSPN to document your efforts and great stories and get you in the Homeschool Museum and Hall of Fame some day. I really solicit your stories, especially from those early days. Another goal (2009) is to have the opportunity sit down with many of the sports leaders at one time and make it an annual event.

"Athletic Scholarships for Homeschoolers Back Then, You Gotta Be Kiddin'?"

While we were so busy fighting the system - trying to get facilities - and improving our looks from T-shirts to actual uniforms, we still had to deal with establishment of the private and public school sports teams to "get our foot in the door". Getting the attention of the colleges just wasn't quite on the radar.

Many of us had to work hard to "sell" the idea of homeschool sports, proudly using the "C-word" - Competitive and trying to get parents on board during an era when homeschooling was blossoming. For me, sports was THE thing that increased the membership of our support group, at one time I had 200 kids doing soccer. Ironically, there was a period of time where the only outside competition to a sports program were the occasional field trips. Eventually, co-ops and a whole slew of homeschooling activities became the norm. This gave a platform to us coaches to be able to "preach" commitment and to encourage these great kids on how to juggle a busy schedule. (Today we deal with "dual-enrollment", umbrella and virtual "schools", and the search for a defining what a homeschool student is these days :)

While homeschooling leaders were our shield in defending "Socialization" by writing books, holding workshops, and defending us on TV and radio, many coaches were thrilled to see the "paper" come out and feature one of their teams in an article - even though we always had to set the reporter straight about what true socialization is - and sports had nothing to do it.

At some point, homeschooling became in vogue, admired, and somewhat accepted virtually everywhere. Later on, it was as if homeschool sports found its stride and it just began to click. We started to hear and see homeschool teams playing homeschool teams on a regular basis. When I created the HSPN web-site in 1997, its only purpose was to unite and organize the Virginia teams by posting and identifying the team contacts and help new groups get started. Suddenly, requests and postings began to trickle in from other states, as well as request from parents begging to find a team or asking for help in getting started (hence, the publication of our handbook). 12 years later, over 800 homeschool organizations nationally are now posted on the HSPN site. (please post yours).

We have a great cycle of maturing leagues and conferences, Tournaments, World Series and an explosion in the number of teams. We know in some states that homeschool teams are able to compete against Public schools, while in every state, homeschool teams are in the mix with Private, Christian and rival homeschool teams. It is simply, beautiful!

Breaking Barriers

Many a coach can remember being laughed at or snubbed from the "establishment" way back in the startup days. But rather than march on Washington making demands, we pressed forward, kept the faith, and with blood, sweat and tears, we persevered. And wouldn't you know it, now we find ourselves under the lights playing high school TACKLE FOOTBALL. We have homeschool kids with free rides to Division I schools on athletic scholarships. How many of this year's Olympians are home educated? Every homeschool tournament has more teams than it can handle, and as I am writing this, 2 new teams have just been posted. We even have a homeschool-specific insurance policy for general liability available to any homeschool sports organization. read policy

With God, all things are possible!

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