SunShine - Basketball City - here we come!!!

SunShine

Mar. 14, 2009

Basketball City - here we come!!!

Well, well, well. If Springfield, Missouri didn't know much about home-schooling before this week, boy, will they be surprised when they see what hits them when the National Christian Home-School Basketball Championships come to town!!! 2009 finds the championships making a big move from Oklahoma City, where it has been held for about 7 years running. The guy in charge says there are 350-360 teams participating - largest turnout ever - and that equates in my "pea brain" math to at least 3500 people and more numbering upwards of 500 (I was just counting 5 players per team and one parent per player - but home-schoolers travel in packs, so I know it's more than that lowball estimate)!

All-American team selections are announced in a ceremony starting on Monday afternoon and then games start for varsity players. Other days, kids play in one game per day per team. For us, that means 2 games per day (ours plays on her natural age group and plays up an age group too), plus watching friends in other games. I think our home-school athletic organization is taking 4 teams. And we have friends with several other programs from in and around the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

I hope I will get a chance to blog while I'm there and show some photos of the crazy times we have together. I'm going to post a little sampling from last year's national tournament here . . .

Shanisha and Susannah cheering on the Riders!

Shanisha and Susannah cheer on the THESA Riders - love those crazy wigs!!!

THESA Riders - 14U Girls win 1st place in division 5A

14U Girls won first place in the 5A Division - they're obviously tired - but it's a happy tired!

When the THESA Riders Varsity girls won the National Championships, the boys' team were their biggest fans!

This is just before the Varsity Girls played in the National Championship game - our 18U girls took home the gigantic trophy, winning it all over KC Metro. One of the things I really LOVE about this THESA group is that the boys were as thrilled for the girls to win as the girls were. The boys made capes and bought crazy fun gear and rode around the gym like the only reason they came to town was to cheer for their friends. Great support and great spirit!

As you can see - we have a VERY good time together. Who can complain about spending a week watching (or playing) a sport you love, surrounded by good friends who love Jesus and share your educational and spiritual ideals? We think it's one of the best time investments and financial investments we could make for our daughter and for our family.

So again, I say - - - basketball city - here we come!!!

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Comments

Sep. 9, 2009 - HS Basketball

Posted by multicultural

Your post peaked my interest. Basketball is THE reason I had to stop homeschooling my oldest. She needed to get intothe public schools in order to be on a team. Do they allow homeschoolers to participate on school teams there? I'm going to try to find a website about the Nat'l Tourny. Is it very competitive? Do kids continue on to play in college?

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Sep. 9, 2009 - basketball

Posted by Sunny

Multicultural - - - we switched sports to basketball so that our daughter had an outlet to play - she really didn't want to go to public school, although I did offer it before her 9th grade year since she loves athletics so much.
Here is the website for the National Basketball Tournament - - -
www.homeschoolbasketball.com
This year's tournament will be in Springfield MO again over Spring Break week - mid-March 2010.
Our team's website is www.thesaridersbasketball.com if you would like to read more about our team. There are LOTS of home-school teams in Texas. Don't know where you live, but there are 6 that I know of within 1-2 hour drive of our home.
While I was at the national tournament last March, I found a set of teams in the Northeast USA that had never heard of the tournament where we were, although they did have their own smaller tournament there. Our team has several girls playing in colleges on scholarship right now who have graduated in the last couple of years. Others are definitely being groomed and scouted by colleges - both big ones and small ones - and will graduate in the next 1-3 years.
Hope that helps! If not, contact me again and I will try to get you more info.

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Sep. 9, 2009 - basketball

Posted by Sunny

Oops - I didn't answer your other question - - - the state doesn't not make it mandatory for the school districts to accept home-schooled students, so it is up to the individual school districts. Our old school district was very unfriendly to home-schoolers. This one seems more friendly, but we haven't fully researched the options here. (we are still in North Texas, just a different school district - moved during the last school year).

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About Me

We love Jesus and adore each other! We are probably an eclectic home-schooling family - if that means that we pick and choose our curriculum to suit our needs instead of buying the box and we utilize the "mommy's in charge and keeps us all doing what we love and learning at the same time" family management technique!