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Saturday, March 1, 2008
Getting Out of the House
Central Kansas, KS
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By: Cathy Myers
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Photo(s) By: A.M. Thomas
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The Wichita Warriors home school athletic program began 15 years ago with a basketball team. Under its athletic director from the start, Kenny Collins, the program now offers seven different sports
What do you do when your kids want to play competitive sports, but they don’t attend public or private schools? Meeting this need became the catalyst for home school parents like Wichitans Kenny Collins and Joel Jackson to start their own athletic programs.
Fifteen years ago when Collins’ oldest son Brian was in junior high, he and a number of other boys his age said they wanted to play competitive basketball, not just intramural or YMCA ball. Today, 24-year-old Brian Collins is a coach himself of one of the many teams that make up the Wichita Warriors, a home school athletic program.
“We never intended for (the Warriors) to get this big. The Lord blessed. It wasn’t my vision for the program to expand like it did. It just took off,” explains the elder Collins.
Over 200 student-athletes representing 100 families play for the Warriors teams.
Today the Warriors program includes 17 teams, representing seven different sports: volleyball, soccer, basketball, softball, baseball, track and cheerleading. This is a distinctive of the Warriors, according the Collins, in that “most home school sports programs across the country are focused on one or two sports, and that’s it.” All the Warriors teams have Christian, private, and public school opponents. Two-thirds of the high school teams’ competitors are public schools, while the majority of the junior high teams’ are Christian schools.
Kenny Collins has remained the athletic director of the Wichita Warriors since its inception 15 years ago. All of the parents involved in the program are volunteers, including Collins, although for the first time he is receiving a part-time salary this year.
The way Collins figures it, he will have homeschooled for 32 years by the time his six kids have graduated from high school. At games, he says he’s often asked, “Are you the grandpa or the daddy?”
One of six children who calls Kenny Collins “Daddy” is Candice, a freshman on the junior varsity cheerleading squad. Coached by her older sister Lindsay, Candace and her teammates were “top team” at a National Cheerleading Association competition last summer. Although mom Peggy Collins was never a cheerleader herself, she worked with daughter Lindsay to get her started in the sport. “It’s fun to go out and perform and compete against other cheerleading squads” as well as try to “perk up the crowd,” Candice says. Casey Jewel, an NCA All-American in 1999 and 2000, also coaches the cheer squad with Lindsay Collins.
Home school kids are grateful to be a part of the Warriors program. Junior Aimee Shrout, a member of the varsity girls basketball team, says it “lets homeschoolers express themselves in sports and have a social life.” Junior John Belsan, the team captain of the varsity boys basketball team, echoes Shrout’s sentiment. Playing sports “is a way to see friends,” he says.
“Home school children need opportunities to compete in competitive sports,” notes Brian Rose, a Warriors home school parent. Long-lasting relationships between team members develop over the years.
Parent Cindy Kennedy, whose daughter, Ashley, is a Warrior cheerleader, says her daughter’s best friends are on her cheer and volleyball teams: “Other than our church, this (Warrior sports activities) is our social life.”
During the program’s first year in 1994, the Wichita Area Home School Athletic Association was formed to oversee the team. With the help of former Wichita Christian Center Academy coach Jamie Means, Collins rounded up several Christian and public school opponents for the Warriors’ first boys basketball season.
By the time the second season started in ’95, the Warriors added volleyball, girls basketball, and girls and boys track. They also joined the Kansas Christian Athletic Association, which had formed that same year. The Warriors joined the Kansas State High School Athletic Association during its ninth year of existence.
Immanuel Baptist Church opened its Family Life Center with two full-size basketball courts the same year the Warriors began playing, and the church continues to let Warriors teams have two practices a week and play games there. “The church has been really good to us,” says Collins. However, the home school athletic board started a building fund a couple years ago, and they hope to have a facility to call their own, according to Collins.
The Warriors do not compete in the state playoffs, but they do compete in national home school basketball tournaments during the season. Parent Paul Dohm, who has been a board member since the athletic program started, noted how the national basketball tournaments have been a highlight for him and his family. Warriors teams have traveled to San Antonio and Estes Park, Colo., in the past, entire families taking a week’s vacation to support student-athletes. The Warriors have hosted tournaments in Wichita as well.
In early February Collins says “the girls went 2-1 and came in second at a tournament in Tulsa, and the boys lost three, all by less than 6 points at a tough tournament in Texas.”
Parent Pat Whitley says she and her husband were glad to make the drive to Wichita from their home in Newton so their two sons could attend Warriors practices and games. “They live basketball. We go to all the games as a family,” she said, adding with a laugh, “We’ll probably go through withdrawal when the season is over.”
There are even a couple standouts from the Warriors program who have moved on to compete on the Division I level: Christine Farthing, who was a cheerleader at Wichita State University several years ago, and Rachel Talbert, who currently attends Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, where she throws the discus. (Dale Mleynek has coached the Warriors track team since it started.)
“All total, we have been able to help about 30+ home school athletes get college scholarships,” says Collins. “Most of the scholarships are to junior college or small Christian colleges (NAIA Divison II and III). We do have a couple of softball girls who are currently getting some interest,” Collins added.
The Warriors are not the only home school athletic program in the area. Joel Jackson, another father who wanted to see his kids play high school sports, started the Wichita Defenders last fall in time for his daughter Mackenzie to play for the volleyball team during her senior year.
“Volleyball has always been my passion,” Mackenzie says. The sport provided her with “a chance to be with friends and do what we love to do.” She even lettered this year. She spoke highly of Tonya Robertson, the girls coach, whose experience includes playing volleyball at Sterling College.
Jackson has three other children who provided further impetus to start the Defenders. The program includes junior high and high school girls volleyball teams, as well as junior high and high school girls and boys basketball teams. “There were enough kids in the Wichita area to warrant another home school athletic program,” says Jackson. According to Jackson, “a town the size of Wichita” has a lot of home schoolers who want to play competitive sports.
Playing for the Defenders high school basketball team is “more than just athletics” for sophomore Grant Ingram. “Home schooling concentrates on character,” and so exhibiting good sportsmanship and attitude is paramount, he says.
Like the Warriors, the Defenders joined the KCAA and KSHSAA so they could play Christian, public, and private school teams. Recently the Defenders high school boys team competed in the Harold Thomas Interstate Classic hosted by Field Kindley High School in Coffeyville. At the mid-season tournament, the Defenders played against J.C. Harmon, a Class 5A school, Cherryvale of 3A and St. James Academy of 4A, winning one game and losing two. With just 31 student-athletes in the Defenders program, Jackson says this was a respectable record.
Truly, athletics and teens just go together, regardless of the size or emphasis of the school they attend. The joy derived from high school athletics and team competition is central to all educational programs, including the home school experience.
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