Let’s Create Our Own Sports Association
By Kelly Anderle
Sports are an important part of one’s growth. They provide physical exercise, strengthen one’s body and mind, and promote cooperation among team mates as well as good sportsmanship; and they are lots of fun.
However, there are few opportunities outside of the traditional school setting in which teenagers in the Chattanooga area can participate. This has left a huge void for Chattanooga area homeschoolers.
We are asking you to be pioneers with us. This year we are embarking on something brand new for the area — a sports association for high school and middle school aged homeschoolers and private schoolers.
Our hope is that we can develop a competitive league that will give our children the opportunity to play sports with the same level of intensity that they would experience if they were enrolled in the public school system, yet with the parental oversight that comes from parents who are highly committed to educational and moral excellence.
This is a beginning. Those of you who are committing at this time are committing to pioneer a powerful vision. Pioneering means to blaze trails that have not been tread before. Pioneering means that things are not going to be as clean as we would like them at first.
We will face challenges, but if we commit to walking through these challenges we will be part of making something that benefits the entire homeschool community in our area.
We invite you to make a dream a reality this year. We invite you to pioneer the beginning of a homeschool sports association in our area.
We started with competitive football this fall. We did not have enough players to field an entire team so we partnered with a private Christian school in Dalton, Christian Heritage School. The result was unbelievable. We had 9 homeschoolers on the high school team and 4 homeschoolers on the middle school team. The kids learned a lot, played a full season, made lots of new friends and mentors, and had a great time. The middle schoolers played Grace Baptist Academy, Silverdale Baptist Academy, David Brainerd Christian, OLPH, Lookout Valley, St. Jude and Temple; all of Chattanooga. The high schoolers played Grace and Lookout Valley as well as a homeschool team from Bartow County, Ga., and several other teams in Tennessee and Georgia, and even one in Alabama. This was a wonderful partnership as they provided complete equipment, a practice field, coaching staff (We had one of our dads, Jim Hill, who acted as assistant coach for the high school team), and an athletic director and dedicated and experienced parents who knew how to mark the fields, set up the concession stands, hire referees, secure a field for home games, and work out all the details for home and away games. And all of this at price much lower than we would have been able to offer this year.
We also had a flag football team for 9–12 year olds that learned lots about the game and had incredible amounts of fun. This team was coached by Jimmy Perry.
Our next endeavor is basketball. We have a couple of parents who have said they would be willing to coach or help coach. We are looking for a few more coaches as well as parents who can help with the details; setting up game schedules with other teams, securing gyms for practices and games, securing referees, uniforms and the many other details that need to be taken care of to make a successful season.
We know we are asking a lot but as we mentioned earlier this is a great pioneering year. Being the first year ever for a homeschool league in Chattanooga, nothing is in place yet and we need lots of help to get this off to a great start.
