TYLER, Texas — As we continue to navigate through the pandemic, many parents have moved their kids to at-home learning, also known as home school.
Did you know your home school student can still compete in sports at a high level against some of the biggest schools in East Texas?
Our sports anchor Ashley Moore recently discovered Tyler HEAT, a program doing just that as she takes us through the journey of what it’s like to be a home-schooled athlete.
Home Education Athletic Teams or HEAT as they say here in Tyler is a program putting kids on the map that you otherwise might not have heard of. Kyle Penney, board chairman of Tyler HEAT, said the program was built based on demand.
“Tyler HEAT is homeschool sports,” Penney said. “As you might expect, homeschool doesn't have an organized place to play like public school does. So parents got together many years ago and said we want opportunities for our kids to play sports and HEAT was born.”
HEAT doesn’t have a home gym, so varsity basketball coach Jason Carlile said that’s where the community has come in to help.
“We have been blessed by Southside Baptist Church in Tyler as well as Bullard Southern Baptist Church,” Carlile said. “They have both offered their gym facilities to us for practices and or games when needed over the past several years, and we couldn't have done it without them doing that. And not only that, like we don't have a school bus, or thing so every parent is expected to get their kid to practices and to games.”
Let’s insert the Barham family, who have four siblings all a part of the HEAT program. The family has two senior basketball players, a junior and a sixth grader who have been home-schooled all of their life. Their mom Staci Barham, said it’s because of their way of life.
“Well, we began early on when my husband was based,” Barham said. “We as a family were based in England at Lakenheath. He's Air Force and we weren't quite sure if we wanted to do British schools or how we wanted to work that so we started home-schooling. That way we could pack up school books and come home during deployments and things like that. And it just worked so well for our family as a military family that here we are with two seniors about to graduate. They've been pre-K all the way through high school homeschooled.”
Did we mention HEAT has a killer basketball team? Full of students learning in different homes across the region, coming together and actually competing with Class 3A and 4A schools here in Texas.
“It's taken a while to convince people that homeschoolers can compete and compete well and win,” Barham said. “And they have so it's been a few years in the making, but we were super excited to join the program a couple of years ago.”
Her son Andrew Barham agrees.
“We've had quite a few people who haven't played us before; they definitely underestimate us,” Andrew said. “I was in the locker room one time, and I was changing and some guy walked in and he was talking with his friend. They're from a different school and they're like all Tyler HEAT's here. They suck. And someone's like, Oh no, bro, you're about to lose, and we beat them by about 20 points.”
Homeschool students tend to get a bad reputation, with common misconceptions like they have no social skills, are loners and some even say they can’t function in the real world.
“I do not like that people say that,” Ellie Barham said. “I think it's very common. And it kind of makes sense when people just assume that but I really enjoy volleyball because people are like, 'oh, so you don't have friends or you don't do anything. Like no, I do stuff. So it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.”
Even for the kids who do struggle socially, HEAT is full of many students from similar educational backgrounds, who all come together and are basically learning life together.
