The National Homeschool Christian Basketball Tournament started last week in Oklahoma City. The decade-old event may be the closest thing to an umbrella organization for homeschool athletic groups that usually start up and form leagues by discovering others like them. Their numbers have spread in the past decade with the growing homeschool movement as more parents choose to educate their children themselves, often for religious reasons. Homeschool athletes appear to gravitate to smaller church-affiliated colleges. Tournament coordinator Tim Flatt, who coaches a team in Oklahoma City, estimates between 500 and 700 homeschool athletic associations offering varsity level basketball nationwide.
Some groups also play other sports.
Oklahoma has seven varsity programs, Flatt said. There are 20 in the Indiana Christian Basketball Alliance, which has a state tournament unaffiliated with the national one. There are many more teams than that in the state. Some states allow homeschool athletes to play on public school teams. Nathan Day, who averages 13 points a game at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., was a homeschool student who played varsity basketball at a private high school in Kansas.