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Home-schoolers field own teams

Home-schooling parents in Frederick County, learning that their children could not play on high school football teams, decided not to punt. They formed their own squad instead.
    "My son and daughter have not been able to play football or cheer because the [community] programs end at eighth grade," says Terry Delph, who with fellow home-school mother Nancy Werking co-founded the Central Maryland Christian Crusaders.
     "This team is really, really needed," she says.
    The Crusaders now are the second football team in Maryland made up entirely of home-school and private-school students. The Maryland Christian Saints first took the field last year in Harford County, north of Baltimore.
    "You can be a Christian, hit really hard on the football field and still glorify God," Mrs. Delph says.
    The Crusaders and their cheerleader squad for girls yesterday held their second informal practice at St. Stephen's Reformed Episcopal Church in Eldersburg, Md. Official practices are set to begin July 31.
    The football team currently includes 28 boys, while nine girls have signed up as cheerleaders.
    Mrs. Delph's son, Bobby, 16, hopes to play defense for the Crusaders.
    "I think that we have a really good team and a really good program," he says. "I am excited."
    Bobby went to public school until eighth grade, when Mrs. Delph became concerned that he was falling behind. She pulled him out and began home-schooling him.
    Her daughter, Megan, 14, cheered for nine years for the community youth-football team. Now she helps her mom teach cheers to the other girls.
    "I think it will be a great opportunity," Megan says. "It will be a lot of fun."
    Many of the children already know each other from a home-school support group, and Mrs. Delph and Mrs. Werking's sons already were friends.
    David Arenz, one of the Saints' coaches, said he anticipates more football teams in Maryland being started by home-schooling families.
    "As more parents see this as something that is [possible], more teams will show up," he says.
    The two Maryland home-school teams will play each other in a couple of scrimmages at the beginning of the season, then in two regular-season games.
    The Crusaders have nine games scheduled. They and the Saints cannot play against public schools, so their games will be against other private-school or home-school teams. The Saints have traveled as far away as Philadelphia to play, organizers say.
    Both teams are overseen by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which helps with fundraising and provides guidance and insurance. The nonprofit, interdenominational ministry is one of the nation's largest Christian sports organizations.
    The ministry was founded in 1954 to challenge athletes and coaches from the professional ranks down to the youth leagues to use athletics to exemplify the life of Jesus. Among those in its Hall of Champions are PGA golfer Larry Nelson and Roger Staubach, the Heisman Trophy winner and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback.
    The Crusaders' parents and players have raised nearly $30,000 for uniforms, tackling dummies and, of course, footballs. Football is an expensive sport, Mrs. Delph points out, especially without state funding.
    Mrs. Delph says she does not expect home-schooled children in Maryland ever will be allowed to play on public school teams. "And if it does happen, it won't be in my kids' time," she says.
    Fifteen states require public schools to allow home-schoolers access to classes or sports, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association in Purcellville, Va. Virginia and the District also are also not among them.
    The legal group argues that since home-schooling families pay taxes that are used for public education, they should not be excluded from public sports programs.
    Home-schooling was not recognized as legal by most states until the early 1990s. Today, it is legal in some form in every state.
    The Crusaders' head coach, the Rev. Eric Jorgensen, is a home-schooling father with five sons. His 10th-grade son, David, is on the team.
    Mr. Jorgensen worked for three years to get a bill through the state legislature that would allow students not attending public schools to play on public school teams -- only to see the bill fail each time.
    "We eventually gave up because our kids were getting older," Mr. Jorgensen says.

Striking at the heart of the schools


The level of enthusiasm varies from region to region, but there is no question that sports is more important than education to most high-school students. This is as true of homeschooled children as of their private- and public-school counterparts. For while personal instruction tailored to the individual is a much superior method of learning algebra, Latin and Shakespeare, it is impossible to play football alone unless a Playstation is involved.

The laws vary from state to state, but in those school districts where homeschool participation in sports is banned, parents who wanted to give their children the chance to participate in team sports often opted for lawsuits and political lobbying in the interest of forcing public schools to allow athletes not attending those schools to play on their sports teams. However, this is a short-sighted and sub-optimal strategy for five reasons.

First, it teaches reliance on the courts and legislatures to correct a perceived injustice rather than personal initiative. Is running to Mommy Government at the first sign of difficulty truly the lesson most homeschooling parents wish to teach their children?

Second, by creating an emotional involvement with the local public school, athletic participation strengthens the very institution that should be encouraged to wither away.

Third, even if such efforts are successful, the ability to participate is unlikely to be permitted for long, as what a legislature can give under pressure, it can also take away.

Fourth, it fails to build an alternative structure for future generations of homeschooled children.

And fifth, it often doesn't work.

And while it may be churlish and unjust to deny homeschooled children the right to play for the very institutions that are funded by their parents' taxes, one can hardly expect coaches and athletic directors who belong to the National Education Association to embrace what is quite literally the competition and a potential threat to their financial livelihood.

So I found it encouraging to note in the Washington Times that just as their predecessors did not shirk from providing children with an academic option, modern homeschoolers are beginning to work together to offer their children sporting options as well:

    Home-schooling parents in Frederick County, learning that their children could not play on high school football teams, decided not to punt. They formed their own squad instead. "My son and daughter have not been able to play football or cheer because the [community] programs end at eighth grade," says Terry Delph, who with fellow home-school mother Nancy Werking co-founded the Central Maryland Christian Crusaders ...

    The Crusaders and their cheerleader squad for girls yesterday held their second informal practice at St. Stephen's Reformed Episcopal Church in Eldersburg, Md. Official practices are set to begin July 31. The football team currently includes 28 boys, while nine girls have signed up as cheerleaders.

The separation of school and sport is hardly a new concept. Already, some of the most elite teams in the country have very little to do with school – the basketball academies that regularly send players to the NBA and NCAA Division One programs aren't exactly devoted to academics – and in Europe nearly all sporting competition revolves around athletic clubs, not schools, which has likely helped Europe surpass the United States in both academic and athletic performance.

Public schools that can't teach children how to read or speak English is nothing new, but when a team full of NBA All-Stars can't even medal in basketball, then one must truly fear for the future of America.

Some thinking outside the conventional will no doubt be necessary, but allies may well be found in the churches, community centers and even professional sports teams. For example, some of the richest and most famous professional teams in the world hail from multi-sport athletic clubs, including Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, which also sponsor numerous children's squads from the first grade level on up.

It will not be an easy nor a short-term endeavor to recreate an entire sporting infrastructure, but it can be done, and with the energetic growth of homeschooling, it is quite likely that it will be done. And as with standardized tests and spelling bees, success in the field of sports will eventually attract the best athletes to these extra-curricular sporting organizations, thus furthering the American enthusiasm for the development of children devoid of government control.