“I really never thought about it until my mom and dad said I should go try out and play a high school sport as that’d be a fun way for you to meet more people… we’ve been with it ever since.”

Senior Alison Yuan and junior Kristin Yuan have been home schooled most of their lives but didn’t make the decision to try out for a public school sports team until they entered high school.

“[I like] the flexibility of [homeschooling] because you can balance school with other interests,” A. Yuan said.

Even though they both have been playing sports at Central for years, neither girls could recall any other home schooled students who also play sports for a public school in Illinois. A. Yuan attributes the lack of awareness as the reason why there are so few home schooled students playing these sports.

The Illinois High School Association (IHSA) does not prohibit home schooled students from participating in athletics but also do not mandate that schools allow these students to participate either and instead, lets the individual schools make the decisions, according to the IHSA website.

There are specific requirements that were passed as a by-law by all the member schools of IHSA in order for students to be eligible to participate in athletics at a public school.

“The school district has to approve home schooled students participating at the member schools and there has to be a process where the student is actually enrolled at the high school,” Assistant Executive Director for IHSA Scott Johnson said. “It doesn’t mean that the courses are taken at the high school, but the enrollment is a formal recognition that the student is officially a student at the high school. The administration of that school is responsible— in all the ways they need to be responsible to be a member of the IHSA— for making sure the students are completing their course work, that they are completing 5 classes successfully and that they do their weekly grade check that goes along with that.”

All students— home schooled or not— have to comply with these by-laws throughout the time of participation. The students need to live in the school district and can’t participate in a school district which they do not live in.

These specific requirements were passed as a by-law by the member schools of IHSA. The process was that a by-law was proposed and the member schools approved it in a vote.

These requirements is what has given home schooled students the power to participate if that’s what the district chooses to do, according to Johnson.