Eagles Schedule Packed with Difficult Games

by HS Hoops

Scheduling games for a homeschool basketball team brings unique challenges.  Unlike the high school teams in the Georgia High School Association (GHSA), the South Carolina High School league, the Georgia Independent Schools Association (GISA), and the South Carolina Independent Schools Association (SCISA), the Augusta Eagles, the area's lone homeschool basketball team, does not belong to an established state wide association.  Therefore, the team cannot count on 12-20 automatic games versus region opponents during each season.  To complicate matters further, the GHSA prohibits its member schools from competing against non GHSA teams (like the Augusta Eagles).  And the GISA, SCISA, and South Carolina High School League teams tend to have very few openings in their schedules each year because of restrictions on the number of games allowed by association rules and requirements to play region opponents twice during the regular season.

Augusta Eagles in Greensboro, NC

But Eagles coaches have found benefits to not belonging to a formal association of high school teams.  "We have to travel to find games, but we are not limited to a certain number of games.  And we get to play anyone who will schedule us, besides the GHSA teams,"  says Eagles boys coach Chad Cook.  So the Eagles have used the flexibility that being a homeschool team provides to schedule a group of games and scrimmages in November and December against a diverse group of teams that should prepare the team for the demanding 2012 homeschool regular season and post season tournament games.

The Eagles have already played four times, including an exhibition game versus the Augusta State University alumni basketball team and a preseason tournament (East Coast Tip Off Classic in Greensboro, NC) championship game versus one of the best homeschool basketball teams in the country, the CVHAA Patriots from Richmond, Virginia.

During a 27 day period beginning Saturday, November 12, Augusta will play 11 games and scrimmages against some of the best GISA, South Carolina High School League, SCISA, and homeschool teams.  "The great thing about being a homeschool team is that we can get started early and really test ourselves early," Cook adds.

Eagles after finishing 2nd in last season's Garden City Tourney

Augusta's near term challenges include a road game this Saturday (November 12) at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School (the GISA's defending 3A State Champions); scrimmages and games versus Bethune Bowman (Nov 15), Fox Creek (Nov 21), McCormick (Nov 22, Dec 5), and Battery Creek of the South Carolina High School League; a road game against the Southeast's premier homeschool team, the North Atlanta Flight; and the Eagles' third entry into the Garden City Classic (December 1-3), hosted by Augusta Prep Day School.

This is the first season that the Eagles have been challenged so early and so often.  Saturday's opponent, the Mount Vernon Mustangs, have won two of the last three GISA 3A state championships.  The Mustangs compiled a 33-2 record last season before defeating Savannah's Bethesda Day School in the state finals.

HS Hoops will provide updates and highlights of this game and others on augustaeagles.blogspot.com.