Homeschool Families Are Pushing For High School Sports Participation

Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times,

Luke Cecchi watched from the bleachers as his friends and neighbors played varsity sports.

The homeschooled student from Cazenovia, New York, wasn't allowed to try out for the local high school soccer and basketball teams under a state law regulating scholastic athletics, even though his family paid thousands of dollars in property taxes to the local school district and supported local recreation sports programs through fees, participation, and volunteer coaching.

New York state has resisted change, despite bipartisan support from lawmakers and the growing number of states allowing homeschooled students access to extracurricular activities at their neighborhood public schools.

"I wanted to play so badly," Cecchi, now a 23-year-old law school student, told The Epoch Times. "It didn't make sense to me."

On his own, Cecchi found a way to train in competitive basketball and eventually made a Division I college team as a walk-on.

Still, he took an unusual, daunting path against incredible odds in America's ultra-competitive scholastic sports landscape.

All told, the vast majority of states either have laws allowing homeschooled students to participate in their local public school sports and extracurricular activities or leave it to individual districts to decide on a case-by-case basis.