{"id":373823,"date":"2026-08-17T17:16:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T17:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/373823\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T17:16:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T17:16:19","slug":"jump-for-kids-connects-tampa-homeschooled-kids-to-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/373823\/","title":{"rendered":"Jump For Kids connects Tampa homeschooled kids to sports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Youth sports are an important part of every community. They teach children important lessons, along with discipline and social skills.<\/p>\n<p>At <a href=\"https:\/\/insidecontrolacademy.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Inside Control Academy in St. Petersburg<\/a>, a kickboxing class also teaches them self-defense.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re fighting, we\u2019re learning self-defense. It\u2019s a really fun class and stuff because you\u2019re safe and you\u2019re learning really good self-defense stuff in case you were in danger or something bad were to happen you can self-defend,\u201d participant Jocelyn Thorn said.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s fun for the instructors, too.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI enjoy working with kids, and myself being a smaller person and a female, I\u2019ve seen how much it changed my life, and I wish I started sooner so when I get to work with these girls, it\u2019s so good,&#8221; kickboxing coach Kimberly Loucks said. &#8220;Confidence building is something that a lot of people hear about. They want to do it, and what that means to build confidence is to be yourself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>These children are building social confidence as well because they are homeschooled kids.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jumpforkidsfl.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Jump For Kids<\/a>\u00a0is a program that provides opportunities for homeschooled kids to get involved in youth sports and make new friends, which can be tougher to find than it is for in-person-schooled kids.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, it can be a little bit difficult, especially because the stereotype around homeschooled kids, too; and being a homeschooled kid, it\u2019s home so having this opportunity to go out and meet people is really important,\u201d participant Jac Thorn said.<\/p>\n<p>The kickboxing and golf programs are new this year. The academy also offers flag football in the fall and plenty of other sports.<\/p>\n<p>Jeff Pope started the program in 2014 and is thrilled to see how it impacts these kids\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of them have never even been exposed to playing team sports, so for them, to learn how to play flag football and then they can play with their friends in the neighborhood, get out and exercise, it\u2019s a really cool experience to watch them grow and become better at the sports,\u201d Pope said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s great, so being homeschooled, you\u2019re in a smaller bubble than most kids. So when they get to come here, meet me, see me, they also get to be around other people training here at Inside Control Academy, so they\u2019re able to see other women and men here, other people that train as well and they get to kinda feel a part of a community,\u201d Loucks said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Youth sports are an important part of every community. They teach children important lessons,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1238,274,1236,70639,115,596,110,135,137,136,278,835],"class_list":["post-373823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-florida-sports","tag-michael-epps","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-sports","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}