Chino Hills High School had become synonymous with the Ball family in recent years. Brothers Lonzo, LiAngelo, and LaMelo Ball teamed up to lead the school to a perfect 35-0 season and a California state championship in 2016 behind a breakneck offense that thrived pushing the tempo and shooting at will.
LaMelo Ball isn’t the first elite high school athlete to be homeschooled
Tim Tebow, Serena Williams and Sacramento Kings rookie Justin Jackson are a few examples of homeschooled athletes.
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Ricky O'Donnell has covered basketball at all levels for more than a decade at SB Nation. He’s currently the Associate Director of Programming.
Now the Ball family is done with the school. LaVar Ball announced youngest son LaMelo will begin homeschooling to focus on training and development as a basketball player over the next two years. You will have to wait for grassroots season next spring to see LaMelo on the basketball court again.
The decision to pull LaMelo out of Chino Hills during his junior year is the latest example of the Ball family marching to the beat of its own drum. LaMelo is far from the first elite high school athlete to go the homeschooling route, though.
Homeschooling isn’t unprecedented for elite basketball prospects
Justin Jackson didn’t need to go to traditional high school to turn into a McDonald’s All-American, national champion at North Carolina and a first round draft pick in the NBA.
Jackson was homeschooled in Tomball, Texas, where he grew into a top-10 recruit in the country while playing grassroots ball on the same team with Justise Winslow and Kelly Oubre Jr. He chose UNC and had a standout three-year career, peaking with a national title in 2017. Jackson declared for the NBA draft and was selected No. 15 overall by the Sacramento Kings in June.a
- Allonzo Trier, junior guard for Arizona and arguably the best player in the Pac-12, was homeschooled for his first two years of high school before moving to Findlay Prep in Las Vegas. Trier was a five-star recruit and McDonald’s All-American.
- Khadeem Latin, a senior center at Oklahoma, has one of the most unique stories in college basketball. He was homeschooled and took online classes while spending a year playing non-professionally in Spain at the Canarias Basketball Academy.
- Michael Beasley went to six different high schools before enrolling at Kansas State and becoming the No. 2 pick in the 2008 NBA Draft. He was homeschooled for a time while playing at Maryland’s Riverdale Baptist School.
This happens in other sports, too
The most prominent football player to be homeschooled has to be Tim Tebow. Tebow was homeschooled throughout high school before winning the Heisman Trophy for the Florida Gators as a quarterback in 2007.
Homeschooling was so central to Tebow’s identity that he fought for the rights of other homeschooled athletes to play high school sports in other states, an opportunity Tebow had for himself at Nease High School. Tebow’s work helped spur the passing of a law in Texas.
He recently wrote a book on being homeschooled, too:
Homeschooled athletes are all over other sports
As our Tom Ziller noted on Tuesday, homeschooling is regular for lots of athletes.
- Serena and Venus Williams were homeschooled by their father Richard in Compton, California while turning into tennis prodigies.
- Simone Biles started homeschooling at age 13 and turned into the most decorated American gymnast ever.
- Figure skater Michelle Kwan started homeschooling in eighth grade before becoming an Olympian.
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