For your information, the following article was published in the Pickens Progress newspaper.
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North Georgia Falcons Homeschool Football Team Wins 2005 NACA Division 4 National Title
By Roger McDaniel
As we arrived at the National Association of Christian Athletes facility,
reality set in for me as a coach as I watched the deluxe buses from the
large Christian Schools roll in ..Nebraska, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Kansas, Texas, Florida, and so on and so on. In last week's article, this coach had all but closed the door for this year's football season. I even went so far as to thank all of our local businessmen and women for their support and generosity toward the Falcons because I was thinking that it would be the final article that I would want to write about a game this season. Yes. The North Georgia Falcons had finished the regular season with a respectable record and one that earned them an invitation to compete for the NACA title. However, deep down I didn't quite believe that we would be good enough and I knew we didn't have the depth in positions as we did in our 2004 season to be able to go all the way.
As we traveled, my prayer was that our team would end our season with a respectable showing. Well folks, coaches don't play this game on Friday nights. Young men do and I totally miscalculated the most important asset a football player has and that is his heart and the desire to win. The week of practice before we left, I was actually preparing my players to accept the fact that we were gonna have fun as a team on this outing. My players would come up to me and say, "Hey Coach. We're going to win too!" At which I would reply, "Sure, but the most important thing on this trip is to have fun guys!" I've eaten a lot of crow in my day, but this plate of black bird tastes like prime rib! Our guys played superbly on offense moving the ball up and down the field when we needed points and not making mental mistakes. Our defense choked our opponents' powerful offense and shut their running game down completely. The Falcons created turnovers when it counted and shifted the momentum back to us time and time again. I was in awe as our players would march down the field, score and then get on defense and stop our opponents' fresh offense. These guys were like that ol' bumblebee.. too short and heavy to fly according to aerodynamics, but that ol' bumblebee flew anyway! That is exactly what our Falcons did. They flew above the competition when everyone thought they couldn't (even this coach). The Falcons accepted the challenge from their coaches to go and play and have fun. They also dedicated themselves to climb the mountain and bring
back to Georgia the National Title for the first time since Valdosta's
Lowndes Christian School won it in 1988.
Football is the greatest sport I ever played or coached. But as we all
know, it is just a game, and as a young man, my dad used this game as an illustration for the greatest game. That is the 'game of life.' As he
explained to me then, it also is played in four quarters but we can't see
the clock ticking, so we don't know when the game will end. Each of us had better be ready when the whistle blows... through faith in Jesus Christ. I witnessed over 100 young men from Christian schools, answer the call for Christ at this year's tournament. Winning the title of National Champion is a wonderful feeling, but seeing those young men come to Christ is a feeling that is beyond description. Yes, we are the 2005 National Association of Christian Athletes Division IV Football Champions, but that fame is like a vapor that will one day fade away. The lives of these young men will forever be changed.
Thanks again to all of the community leaders who helped to make this
year's North Georgia Falcons' season a 'National' success. Falcons 42 -
Stallions 24! There.....I've said it!
Article from todays Cherokee Ledger News in Woodstock
Sports
From the hand of God
Cherokee homeschoolers get opportunity to play football
North Georgia quarterback Josh Veal (5) rolls out to the right and looks for running room during the Falcons? 32-26 victory over the NCC Crusaders on Oct. 1 at the South Cherokee Recreation Association football field. In the first season of the Georgia Football League, Veal helped lead the Canton-based homeschool team to a league championship and a runner-up finish in the 2004 National Association of Christian Athletics Division 4 National Football Tournament.
For several years when Jordan McDaniel hit his knees to pray he asked for an opportunity to play football. Like his two brothers, Jordan, 17, is homeschooled, but the 5-foot-10, 180-pounder had the desire to play football, just like his dad, Roger, who was involved with the Ole Miss football program.
Jordan had played recreation league until he was 12 but being homeschooled, he was not allowed to play in middle school because he wasn't enrolled in the public school. ?We went to the board of education and had three minutes to state our case,? Roger McDaniel said. ?After the timer went off that was it.? Not wanting to stir up controversy, the board denied McDaniel's request and Jordan was left without a place to play.
?I begged my parents to let me go to public school,? Jordan said. ?I even started slacking back on my schoolwork and tried every way possible to get into public school.?
His parents, Roger and Diana, believed it was the right thing to do to keep homeschooling their children, and told Jordan to continue to pray and if it was God's will, the opportunity would present itself.
For two years, Jordan was away from the football field. He watched is younger brother Zane play rec league and did announcing for his brother's games. However, Jordan's football career got rejuvenated on a fluke meeting thanks to his older brother Colt. Colt played baseball for the Woodstock-based Northside Christian Athletics, a non-for-profit organization providing sports programs for home-educated students.
At an organizational meeting, Jordan perked up when he discovered NCA was attempting to field a football team. Colt, Jordan, Brandon Davis, Joe and Ben Malik became part of the inaugural NCA Lions football program that would be coached by Drew Neidhammer. Neidhammer became the organizations coach by another meeting by happenstance.
Neidhammer, who had coached football at Colonial Hills Christian School in Jonesboro for seven years and helped start a track program, moved to the Woodstock area with his family in 2001.
A few days after moving, Neidhammer's wife Sharon dragged the former football coach to a homeschool convention held at First Baptist Church Woodstock in late July. In jest, Neidhammer went to the NCA table and asked who was the football coach. He was surprised when Jane Barbier, an NCA board member asked if he wanted the position.
?They told me that they had prayed for a football coach,? Neidhammer said of his perchance encounter on July 26. Football practice was supposed to begin in nine days, and Neidhammer thought it was going to be impossible to get a team together at that time, especially considering he had just five players.
After praying about taking the position, Neidhammer made a call to Colonial Hills and the Independent Football League of which his former school was a member. He learned that Forest Hills had terminated its football program and Neidhammer's homeschool team was able to buy their equipment and take over the defunct team's fall schedule. Not loaded with a lot of cash, Neidhammer was a little concerned about the price.
His worries were eased when the former Forest Hill coach said he would sell the complete set of practice uniforms, pads, and gameday uniforms for $100 per set. With the equipment issue solved and less than a week before football practice was to begin, Neidhammer needed to contact the teams on Forest Hills schedule and attempt to create a schedule for NCA's inaugural season.
?The problem was since it was a week before the season was supposed to begin, most of the coaches were out of town,? said Neidhammer, whose initial calls went straight to voicemail.
?On that Monday at 9:30 a.m., I started getting phone calls from Mount Vernon and Colonial Hills and by noon I had a full schedule.?
Through word of mouth, homeschool students began learning about the NCA program and at the team's first practice, 18 players showed up, the exact number of uniforms that were purchased from Forest Hills.
The other issue Neidhammer faced was finding practice space. That was alleviated when the former track standout at Towson State University found a vacant lot adjacent to the Woodstock post office.
He found the owner and asked if the team could use the field to conduct practice. Good fortune also shown on the NCA Lions as they were allowed to play their home games at Dellinger Park in Cartersville. ?I can't take credit for this,? Neidhammer said. ?All of this didn't happen by coincidence. God had his hand in this. I was just a vessel.? Playing eight-man football, the Lions went 1-6 in their inaugural season and earned media attention. The second year NCA had 28 players on the roster and improved to 3-7 and continued to get more media attention.
?For two years we got on the front page of the AJC and the phone started ringing off the hook from Fox and CBS,? said Neidhammer, who had 40 players on the NCA roster by the third year of the program. Due to the success of the NCA program, Neidhammer and assistant coaches McDaniel and Hank St. Denis, the trio entertained the thought of starting a league. With more than 2,000 students being homeschooled and more than 35,000 being homeschooled around the state according to the state school board, the response was overwhelming.
With NCA football program successfully off the ground, St. Denis, who lives in Roswell, and McDaniel, who resides in Talking Rock, decided to create the North Georgia Falcons, based out of Canton. The two Cherokee homeschool teams became members of the eight-team Georgia Football League that allowed homeschool players and students who attend private schools that do not support football programs to play.
Joining North Georgia and NCA for the inaugural season were the Gwinnett County based Georgia Force, the West Georgia Rebels, the NCC Crusaders out of Henry County, the War Hill Warriors from the Dawson County area, the Barrow Saints from Barrow County and Hill Academy. Hill and Barrow will not be in the league this year, but taking their place will be the Bartow Generals, which have players from Bartow, Floyd and Gordon counties, and the East Atlanta Mustangs, who are based out of Rockdale County. More importantly, the top six teams in the league last year return, including the Falcons, who had a banner inaugural season.
Taking players from north Cherokee, Pickens, parts of Alpharetta and Forsyth County, North Georgia finished the regular season with an 8-1 mark and a top seed heading into the playoffs.
They sailed through the playoffs, eliminating NCA in the semifinals, and defeated the Georgia Force 44-10 to capture the inaugural championship. The Force handed North Georgia its only loss in the regular season.
The Falcons also finished in second to the Asheville Saints with a 20-6 loss in the National Association of Christian Athletics Division IV eight-team title game. ?We should have won that game,? St. Denis said. ?I think we fumbled inside the 10-yard line six times.? The success of the GFL's inaugural season is starting to lead to expansion. A Chattanooga team is in the works as well as a team south of Atlanta are expected to join for the 2006 season when the league is expected to go to an 11-man format.
There also have been interest from towns like Macon, Athens and Toccoa and south Atlanta area.
Five of the teams also will field a JV team this upcoming fall, including the two Cherokee teams.
While divine intervention seemed to help the league get off the ground, the hand of God and dedication of parents and coaches have helped the programs to thrive heading into the second season, which begins with training camp on July 25. The first week begins Aug. 19.
While players pay anywhere from $250 to $300 to play for the teams and no player is cut, teams also have been aided by corporate sponsorship. The Arena League's Georgia Force aided the Georgia Force homeschool team. Scott Willis, coach of the homeschool team, developed a partnership with the professional team. As a result, the Force assisted in providing jerseys, equipment, t-shirts and hats to the program.
Willis also was in Las Vegas last week as a guest of the team when the Force lost to the Colorado Crush on the final play of the game in Arena Bowl XIX. It's a relationship with the professional Force, owned by Atlanta Falcons' owner Arthur Blank that could help benefit the North Georgia Falcons. North Georgia was assisted by Siena College last year. The private college in Albany, N.Y. terminated its football program and donated football equipment to the North Georgia Falcons.
For their inaugural season, the Falcons wore green and gold, the colors of Siena. This fall the team, which was the first time in the league to have a marching band, plan to change its colors to that of the Atlanta Falcons. ?If Arthur wants to give us some money we would gladly take it,? North Georgia coach McDaniel said. ?If he wants us to wear orange and white for Home Depot we will gladly do that.?
Teams also have had success generating corporate sponsorship. According to Neidhammer, Publix, Wal-Mart and Kessler Sporting Goods have helped with sponsorship. NCA also is putting together the first annual Gridiron Dinner and silent auction at First Baptist Woodstock on June 30 to help raise money for the football program. The dinner is to help Atlanta business leaders meet and mingle and learn more about the homeschool program.
Heading into its second season, the GFL is garnering attention from colleges. There also were 14 rising juniors and seniors from GFL teams participating in Georgia coach Mark Richt's football camp last week and a few players attended Georgia Tech's football camp. Jordan McDaniel attended both, and the rising junior at North Georgia is beginning to garner interest from many small schools about playing football at the next level, including Shorter College and Presbyterian.
?I think I could play at the next level,? said McDaniel, who plays halfback and middle linebacker.
?I don't think I could play Division-I, but I have had some interest. No offers yet, but some interest.? Colleges also have taken notice to homeschool players. Woodstock resident Jon Brummel, who spent the majority of his time being homeschooled, earned a scholarship to Liberty University. He became the first homeschooler to earn a college scholarship and just completed his freshman season. Brummel was redshirted at Liberty last fall.
Last year close to 250 players were involved with the GFL. This year, more than 300 players are expected to play. During spring practice, NCA had 57 players on the field. As the numbers increase, Neidhammer has even loftier goals for the homeschool program. ?Within 10 years I want to scrimmage Parkview,? Neidhammer said. ?I know they would never play us in a real game, but I would like to schedule them in a scrimmage.?
He also sees a full NCA complex that would house a gym, practice facility and a football field with a track around it. It would help since homeschool teams have to fight for practice space, like the vacant lot next to the post office or a field near First Baptist Church Woodstock. ?We are kind of like gypsies,? McDaniel said. ?We find a place to practice until someone runs us off and then we have to find another place.?
Another goal Neidhammer wants is to develop a legitimate homeschool football national championship where the Georgia state champ would play a champion from another state. While the goal is ambitious, nothing is impossible. God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and Neidhammer helped create a football program in less than 10 days.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-football24sep24,1,3893403.story?coll=la-home-nation
Practicing Faith and Football
Christian boys who are home-schooled get a chance to experience a high school ritual. Some start with little more than enthusiasm.
By Ellen Barry
Times Staff Writer
September 24, 2004
CANTON, Ga. — It is a late summer afternoon and the practice field is full of the sound of boys hitting boys. Shoulders down, eyes ahead, they collide with a little whoosh of air, again and again.
Today, like so many days, the North Georgia Falcons have suffered a number of small deprivations. Their uniforms are secondhand, inherited from a Catholic college in upstate New York. And once again, they have been booted off their practice field by the Buffington Lady Braves, elementary school softball players.
Undaunted, the Falcons resume their practice in a narrow L-shaped clearing behind an abandoned tennis court. As they block out plays, players and coaches pick up little stones that litter the grass and throw them into the woods. The field is also inhabited by a rooster. Every now and then, it lets out a resounding barnyard crow.
Never mind; the Falcons have high ambitions. They are part of the Georgia Football League, eight teams of Christian home-schoolers from Atlanta's suburbs. As August turned into September, the boys claimed for themselves this slice of Americana: the shock of running out into the dazzling light of the stadium; the bruised, unforgettable heroism of Friday night.
Underlying the league's first season is a message of independence. Three years ago, Georgia legislators killed a bill that would have allowed home-schooled children to participate in public school sports, as they do in Florida and 13 other states. It was a sad defeat for Georgia's home-schoolers.
But by the next fall, a few fathers had rounded up nine boys and suited them with pads and helmets; the second year they found 28 players. This year, when the same fathers took on the challenge of forming a league, the response startled them: 250 boys signed up.
And just like that, home-schooled kids were in on a seminal high school experience — purged of trash talk, bloodthirsty rivalry and short cheerleading skirts. As the league grows, its organizers hope, families will have one less reason to return to public schools, or "government schools," as some parents call them.
"I want you to learn to live like a deer! Drink fresh water and eat acorns!" bellowed head coach Roger McDaniel near the end of a recent practice, as the players knelt and looked up at him, helmets in their hands. His voice grew softer, then, and he told them to hold their heads up. They were pioneers, he told them, building a bridge for others to follow.
First, though, they had to learn to play football.
Among the 26 boys who showed up to the Falcons' first practice were experts in goat husbandry, classical violin, civil air patrol, brick masonry, chess, community theater, paintball and the installation of air conditioners. Most of them buzz-cut and gangly, they looked like ordinary boys, but they weren't exactly.
When they arrived, the coaches asked for a show of hands, which confirmed their expectations: Only six of the boys had ever played football. Most prepared for the practice — not tryouts, because any interested boy made the team — the way home-schoolers prepare for everything.
One boy had sat down with his mother in front of a computer and searched the Internet for "football." Another went to the library and checked out a book. Jordan McDaniel, the coach's 16-year-old son, would set up a chessboard to demonstrate to the other boys how to run a play.
There were a few, like Jordan, who had spent years aching to play high school football. A blond, square-shouldered boy, Jordan began a campaign of persuasion at the age of 11, begging his parents to allow him to attend the local public school and play on its legendary team.
Jordan felt they were cheating him of his dream, and he told them so. He tried every angle. He appealed to his father's sense of fair play and nostalgia; more than 40 years ago, before he became a devout Christian, Roger McDaniel played quarterback for the University of Mississippi. But Roger believed that God was telling him to educate Jordan at home.
"I'd tell him, 'You need to get on your knees every night and you need to pray to the Lord to send you a football team,' " said McDaniel, 62.
He will admit, now, that the battles caused him pain. "I told my wife, 'You know what? He's right. It's not fair.' "
The same tensions pulled at families all over the home-school community, said Hank St. Denis, a Roswell real estate agent who has home-schooled seven children.
Home-schooling in Georgia is still primarily fueled by religious conviction. But the children, typically, grow up in ordinary suburban subdivisions. They play with neighborhood kids after they pour off school buses, and they watch their friends experience the rituals of high school. Over the last decade, as the number of home-schoolers climbed to an estimated 50,000, parents appeased their children's complaints with equivalent activities: honor societies, proms, yearbooks. Basketball and baseball leagues were simple enough propositions. But football — with its $400 uniforms and daily three-hour practices — hovered out there, unattainable.
For boys, the longing to play football became an "undertow," breaking the will of family after family, St. Denis said.
"It is the deal-breaker in home-schooling," said St. Denis, director of the football league.
The Falcons' first few practices were all hunger and inexperience. Lined up to practice offensive plays, the center would hike the ball clear over the head of the quarterback, who would look after it with a surprised expression. Defensive linemen would hold onto their opponents' shirts for dear life, hoping it constituted a tackle. The coaches harangued them, then stroked them, then harangued them again. A common theme: Hit someone.
"You are a steamroller! You are a bulldozer! You are a pancake builder!" yelled Jerry Redmond, an assistant coach, when an offensive lineman hesitated. "I still see you waltzing! These guys don't want to dance with you! They don't even like you!"
After a few weeks, a higher percentage of plays were being completed. The ball arched high into the air, over a cluster of boys and into the hands of David Lister, a lean, dark-haired 17-year-old. Josh Veal, 15, the quarterback, darted through the defense the way a tropical fish darts through coral.
At the last practice before the season opener, after instructions about the next day's game, the coaches gave a quiet talk on what they were about to experience: How it can be hard to breathe when you run out of the tunnel into the light. How, when they meet here the next time, they would no longer be practicing, but polishing.
Then the coaches watched their players go home for dinner. Standing on the practice field, in the gathering dark, they wore serene expressions. They weren't fooling themselves.
"There are probably about 10 guys out there who know what they are doing," St. Denis said.
"That's stretching it," said Redmond, mildly.
The air was heavy with humidity on Game Night, and katydids throbbed. In search of a stadium for the Falcons' home games, St. Denis had called county recreation departments all over the state without success; the local public middle school had given them a withering cold shoulder. Finally, St. Denis found a privately owned field that he could rent for $250. A hundred yards of green beckoned under the lights.
Knee-length pleated skirts had arrived for the Falcon cheerleaders, a mostly prepubescent group of players' sisters. Enjoined from using dance moves, jumps, high kicks or derogatory cheers, they chanted, "We don't need music, we don't need bands, all we need are Falcons fans! Screaming in the stands! Screaming in the stands!"
Whoa, thought Reggie Cherry, the Falcons' third-string quarterback, when he saw the War Hill Warriors. His stomach flipped over with fear and happiness. It felt just like the way he had dreamed it. The team ran out onto the field.
On this sultry night, the Falcons were suburban teenagers like any others. Among the first generation of Georgian kids to be home-schooled their whole lives, some worry about the stereotype of home-schoolers as sheltered and socially awkward.
The more critical among them use the word "home-schooler" as an epithet, as in, "He's such a home-schooler," meaning he wears plaid shirts and pleated khaki pants and speaks like an assistant professor. David Lister gives this example: When an airplane flies over a group of teenage boys, the home-schooler is the one who might be inclined to identify the plane, or, worse, to begin listing all the fighter planes or jets that he is aware of.
David, by contrast, is a little bit of a jock, though this was not an easy path for him. David's mother, Terri, who is teaching eight children at home, has come to believe that sports are an unhealthy obsession, "almost a god of our country." The fragments of rock music played over the sound system at games make her cringe with their "sensual tone," and, recalling her own days as a high school cheerleader, she worries about alcoholism and immorality spreading under the bleachers. But when David, her oldest, reached his teens, the boy was so entranced with sports — so talented and so explosively energetic — that she and her husband decided to relax their rules.
"We're having to learn to let go, little by little," she said.
The crowd began to scream a little when Jordan, the coach's restless son, scored a touchdown three minutes into the game. He scored again in the second quarter, propelling his body forward with such enthusiasm that the announcer called out, "No dancing in the end zone!"
It was, both teams agreed, a sweet occasion — just being there, at that particular point, playing a game of football.
Never mind that the Warriors had never played in helmets until that night, and were having trouble seeing the ball. The Falcons, on a winning team for the first time in their lives, were conscious of being part of a movement, of the gradual expansion of their world. Later this season, they hope to have a band, and before long, a home-school sports complex on the outskirts of Atlanta.
Few players were more impressive than David, who, having grown up without a television, had seen only a handful of games in his life. At the beginning of the third quarter, David, a punt returner, caught the ball 55 yards from the end zone.
David found a hole — later, it was hard to say how he found it — and ran and ran and just kept running. He scored a third touchdown for the team, and the North Georgia Falcons began their march to victory.
Times staff researcher Rennie Sloan contributed to this report.