The Columbus Hawks homeschool basketball program is in only its fourth season, but already is making waves at the national level.
The Hawks 12-and-under boys team won a Gold Ball for winning its division at last month’s National Christian Homeschool Basketball Tournament in Springfield, Missouri. The Hawks squad, which is in its first year, won a Silver Ball for finishing second in its division.
“It’s a pretty big deal because it’s really unusual for a first-year varsity team to do that well,” Hawks varsity coach Jerry Lancaster said.
Three home-schooled kids from Columbus were playing for a homeschool basketball team based in Indianapolis, and when another parent was considering sending her son there, she approached the others about starting a local homeschool program.
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Four years later, the Columbus Hawks have several teams from elementary through high school age, and two of those teams brought home hardware from the national tournament.
Each age group featured 32 teams, which were broken down into four eight-team divisions. The Hawks were in the strongest division at both the varsity and 12U levels.
The Hawks varsity won its first two games to reach the final. In the semifinals, it beat a team from Wisconsin that had beaten the Hawks by 16 points in the regional.
“We were kind of comfortably ahead the whole game, and they kind of went on a run, and we got down by four,” Lancaster said. “After that, we played some really good defense, which has been our weakness all year. The kids were just determined to win that game, and they never quit. I felt like we played our best defense and had our best rebounding game we’ve had.”
The four second-place finishers played in a bracket, and the Hawks lost those games by two points and one point.
Junior Caleb Dukes averaged 18.2 points a game to lead the Hawks to a 20-19 record this season. Freshman Jack Farnsley was second-leading scorer and leading rebounder.
Juniors Noah Armstrong and Zach Voils and freshman Hayden Stamper were the other starters Junior Hudson Joy and freshman Jacob Conrad also played a lot of minutes off the bench. Junior Jacob Hart had been a starter, but was injured in the regional.
“I think we did OK, especially the first two games,” Dukes said. “Zachary Voils came up big in that second game to help us get to the championship game. We just played so hard and played really good competition.”
Conrad, Farnsley and Stamper were named to the All-Region Team at the national tournament. Dukes was named to the Indiana Christian Basketball Association All-Star Team, which will play the Michigan All-Stars on Saturday at Grace College.
Dukes, Armstrong and Stamper had played with the Indianapolis Wildcats before joining the Hawks program. During the season, the Hawks practiced three times a week at local churches.
“I really enjoy it, Dukes said. “It’s really good competition. A lot of people said it’s underrated because it’s not high school basketball, but the good teams are going to be able to beat teams in high school basketball.”
Meanwhile, the Hawks 12U team finished fifth in the regional in Indianapolis, but won the “A” pool to advance to a playoff for the national championship. The Hawks fell to Memphis by 14 points in the semifinals before beating the Indianapolis Northside Lions in the third-place game, avenging a loss from the regional.
Memphis had beaten the Hawks by two points in the regional, but employed a different strategy in the national tournament.
“Memphis held the ball on us,” Hawks 12U coach Brian Shewmaker said. “Their coach told me after the game they didn’t want to get in a shootout with us because they had seen how well we shoot the ball.”
Kole Shewmaker and Robbie Williams were the leading scorers on the 22-6 Hawks team, Josh Conrad was the leading rebounder and Caleb Ferguson was the point guard and led the team in assists. Ben Ferguson was the other starter.
Nash Myers, Peyton Dukes, Kaden Greenlee and Jackson Salsberry also were full-time varsity players, although Salsberry was injured and did not play in the national tournament. Nat Farnsley and James Salsberry moved up to the 12U team for the tournament.
Kole Shewmaker, Caleb Ferguson and Peyton Dukes played in 10U national championship last year, when Hawks were runners-up.
“As the games went forward, they got more intense,” Brian Shewmaker said. “Our kids were ready for that. They were ready for the atmosphere. It definitely helped us this year.”
