Home schooled, but looking to travel
Chantelle Dron and Neely Spence

 


These two athletes could change the meaning of ‘cheering for the home team’ at the 2004 Northeast Foot Locker regional.


Chantelle Dron finishing 4th at the 2002 Northeast Foot Locker Championships. She would finish 18th in the Finals in San Diego and then spend much of the 2003-04 working through injuries. She's now returning to form for her final high school campaign. (Photo by John Dye)


Neely Spence has spent the spring and summer before the start of her first year at the high school level setting PRs, like this 17:42 5k in Baltimore on March 13th.

by Don Rich,
publisher of PennTrackXC.com and NTN Northeast regional editor

One of these two homeschool athletes is deservedly well known and returning to top form. The other not only has heredity on her side, but work ethic, as well. And if both achieve their goals at the end of this coming cross country season, they will comprise 25% of the Northeast Foot Locker girls’ team racing in San Diego in December.

But make no mistake, each is quite content to be training, racing and achieving on their own.

Chantelle Dron and her coach don’t think she is missing much by being ineligible for a few of the more prestigious meets. Neely Spence doesn’t think she will miss the experience of running with a high school team.

By any measure, both athletes would be considered to be elite. Dron is entering her senior year with her sights set on majoring in equine sciences in college. (She has narrowed her search to Virginia Tech, Samford, Wisconsin, Colorado State, and the University of New Hampshire). The Granite State star has run 4:22.08 for 1500m (semis @ 2003 IAAF World Youth T&F Champs), was a Foot Locker finalist in 2002, getting 18th, and was the 2003 Golden West Mile champ and 2003 Junior Nats runner-up. Spence, the daughter of Olympic marathoner and World Championships Bronze medallist Steve Spence, is entering 9th grade in Pennsylvania. She has run 17:42 for 5k and a 5:09 1600.

Both love running. But both are homeschooled. Which means that because they don’t officially run for a high school, each is excluded from many of the races their peers take for granted.

In conversations with Dron’s coach, Mick Grant, who runs the Lynx Elite Athletics Track Club; and with Neely and her parents, Steve and Kirsten; there’s a sense that the fight just isn’t worth the pain. Not that they wouldn’t try if their athletes wanted them to try. They simply feel there is more to lose than there is to gain.

Grant says,“ruffling feathers might just make matters worse. And besides, Chantelle can still run at either NSIC or NIC indoors, and AOC Raleigh, so there’s always somebody to chase.” Steve Spence thinks high school athletes probably race too much as it is, so he’s fine with more training, while focusing on bigger races. And Kirsten simply doesn’t want to give up any of the rights they now have. She says many homeschooling parents just don’t want to go near that slippery slope. So they don’t push the issue.

Experience will do that to you.

The Spence’s one attempt to have Neely race in a PIAA-sanctioned race with other athletes her own age didn’t go as well as planned. Steve was being inducted into the Gettysburg XC Invitational ‘Trail of Fame’ in 2003. Gettysburg offers a middle school race. Neely was in 8th grade. It sounded like a good opportunity. The meet directors welcomed her application. But, as Neely recounted, “It said on the application, ‘school district’, and I errantly put homeschooled instead of Shippensburg. They called us and said it was a PIAA meet and that we’d need permission from the superintendent.” Despite not having a middle school team at Shippensburg, the Spences called the athletic director, explained the situation, and asked if their daughter could race. The AD didn’t have a problem, mentioned the need for a physical like any other athlete, and said there’d be some paperwork. That all changed in the next phone call. No help. No signature. No race.

Not one to shirk a challenge, on the day of the race, Neely waited for the final competition to be completed and then ran the two-mile middle school course with her dad and a friend of his. Her 12:20 on the “really, really muddy course” would have been a course record. “And it was nice, because they even gave me a medal.”

In Pennsylvania, it really doesn’t have to be this way in any school. The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA), the state sanctioning body for high school athletics, leaves the decision to the local school boards. And in quite a few districts, homeschoolers are permitted to participate in all extracurricular activities. One high school principal of a large suburban Philadelphia district said it’s been a positive experience, and they wouldn’t change a thing.

In Lancaster County, the Penn Manor school district includes the town and surrounding areas near Millersville. The 1600+ student school only recently permitted homeschoolers to participate. After being approached by several parents in 2001, the school board spent months in discussions and voted its approval by a narrow vote of 5-4. But not until they had some debate. Athletic Director Jeff Roth polled his coaches, and said support ran about 70-30 in favor, with the main concern over academics.

But according to the parent who provided the impetus for the change, Nelson Shertzer, there were what he termed concerns based on “fear, and not fact.” There were concerns that the influx of athletes would displace others who attended the school. Shertzer cited a Lancaster McCaskey High School survey of PA districts that permit homeschooler participation that shows an average of only five athletes per school. At the most, six have participated in one school year at Penn Manor. There were concerns that the homeschoolers wouldn’t be integrated into the team community. That, according to Roth, has not been a problem. “They’re all great kids, and a few have even been starters on their respective teams.” And there was a big concern about academics. Shertzer says the homeschoolers have to take the same standardized tests as their public school peers, and submit end-of-year portfolios to the district’s superintendent. And Roth notes that in Penn Manor, the students have to follow the same protocol as other Penn Manor students, which is even stricter than PIAA standards. “Students have to get a signed sheet from each teacher each week. If they have a D, they have to begin tutoring.” Roth says he wouldn’t change a thing.

Lindsey Shertzer ran middle school cross country for Penn Manor for two years. Last year, entering 9th grade, she enrolled at Lancaster Mennonite, a PIAA sanctioned school where her dad is now the head cross country coach. And according to her father, the experience at Penn Manor couldn’t have been better. “In fact, Lindsey still gets together with one of her former middle school teammates who still runs for Penn Manor.” The fact that the homeschool participation remains a success at Penn Manor is exactly his point, Shertzer says. “This is not about Lindsey Shertzer. It’s about homeschool kids getting the opportunity to participate.”

His advice to other home school parents and athletes looking to convince their district to allow participation in athletics and other extracurricular activities is to approach the district with a good attitude. “Don’t take the taxpayer’s rights approach. It puts people on the defensive. Listen to their concerns, and answer each point. We have good arguments to answer each and every one. This is, after all, a partnership on educating our kids. Let’s work together.”

Dron and Spence go it alone

But Dron and Spence choose to train and race on their own. And getting a shot to run in some of the big races isn’t a problem for either one or any other homeschooled athlete looking for the best competition they can find. In addition to USATF meets, they run road races and other meets that do not have state association sanctioning, or that comply with state association rules. Many of the top high school races that fill that role are sponsored by the National Scholastic Sports Foundation (NSSF), a private, non-profit organization. NSSF runs the Great American Cross Country Festival every September. According to the athlete recruiter and assistant meet director of the NSSF meets, A.J. Holtzerr, the Great American meet, while nationally sanctioned for all athletes, avoids conflicts by running separate races for athletes whose states have strict rules regarding eligibility, should they race against homeschooled or private school athletes. Other meets, such as the the adidas Outdoor Championships, and the Nike Indoor Championships as well as the National Scholastic Indoor Championships, run independently. All high school age runners are welcomed. Athletes compete for either clubs or as individuals, not as representatives of schools. Holtzerr says their goal has always been to have the best athletes in their best events, “so we do what we have to do to.”

While Neely Spence is just starting her high school career, Dron is looking to return to the form that transported her to the nation’s elite as a sophomore. She injured her right foot last September, returned to running favoring it a bit, and injured her left foot. Now, thanks to an orthotic and time to heal, she’s having a great summer of training. In fact, according to both Chantelle and her coach, her fitness is much better than two years ago when she qualified for Foot Locker national finals. She did experience the team atmosphere as a freshman in high school, and said it was fine. But she really likes focusing on one event. After a solid summer of 50 mile weeks to build base, she’ll open her season in October at the Mayor’s Cup race in Franklin Park in Boston. She’ll also run other road races.

Neely Spence has the same goal. “I’ve been looking forward to this year, especially Foot Lockers. I know who all the top runners are, because I’ve watched the videos over and over while I’ve been lifting. I think if everything goes well, and I have a good day, I’d have a shot.”

Dron believes that training on her own has some distinct advantages. “It’s hard to individually motivate yourself to train, but it pays off in the long run by making your mindset stronger, helping you get used to all circumstances, and learning to push yourself.”

Grant sums up his feelings, as well as those of Chantelle, Neely, Steve and Kirsten… “everyone should be allowed to run”. And Shertzer put it a different way. “The face of homeschooling has changed. It’s not the 60’s movement. It’s people just trying to do the best for their children.”

Chantelle and Neely are just two of those many faces of homeschooling. And reason enough for everyone – when the leaves blanket the ground as a chill fall wind whips through the trails of Van Cortlantd Park – to cheer for the ‘home team’, no matter where they get their education.

 

 

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