SPORTS

COOL SCHOOL

Accelerator School gives hockey and soccer players an academic alternative while chasing their dreams

BY KURT DUSTERBERG

ACCELLERATOR SCHOOL STUDENT ATHELETE DOMINIK CESPEDES. PHOTOS COURTESY OF JIM SCHNEIDERMAN.

If you walk into the Invisalign Arena in Morrisville on any weekday morning, the first thing you notice is the bustle of activity in every corner of the hockey rink. The players range across the teenage years and move on the ice with speed and skill. One skater at center ice works on stickhandling. Near the boards, another listens to instruction from a coach. At the far end of the ice, a player closes in for a shot against a goalie. And when practice ends, they all hurry to the locker room and shower before heading upstairs. That’s where school starts at 11 a.m. and runs until 3:45 p.m.

Accelerator School is an academic alternative for middle and high school students with a heavy focus on athletic performance. The school’s hockey academy has 30 students. Another 18 participate in a soccer academy, which trains on two outdoor turf fields. Both facilities are part of the Wake Competition Center campus that houses training centers for a variety of sports. The second floor of the twin-rink arena includes individual classrooms for both middle and high school courses. The middle school classroom has three full-time teachers, while the high school curriculum is mostly online. Enrollment begins at $17,500 and runs to $19,500.

“We don’t consider ourselves an online school because we have so much support built in,” says Jackie Avallone, the school’s high school coordinator. “Our entire high school program is NCAA-–approved. North Carolina has their state standards, which all of our courses are meeting, but the NCAA is the clearinghouse for what is acceptable as far as student-athletes.”

The school does not, however, have athletic teams. The students all play on high-level soccer club teams or hockey programs outside of school. So the morning blocks of on-ice training and outdoor soccer practice at the Accelerator School are meant to accentuate personal skill development.

FIRST-CLASS TRAINING AND TEACHING Many of the Accelerator School’s students hope to earn college scholarships or pursue other paths that can lead to professional leagues. To that end, the school has a staff of experienced coaches who offer comprehensive training and guidance for navigating their post–high school plans as student-athletes. The hockey instruction comes from former professional athletes and high-level coaches who provide skills instruction, performance evaluations and individualized video sessions. The soccer academy includes similar instruction, along with a residency program that allows students to train at an Accelerator School academy in Spain.

The school opened in 2016 as a soccer-only academy, housed in the hospitality suites at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary. The school’s co-founder, Terry Ransbury, initially planned to build his own facility for the Accelerator School, but after watching Wake Competition Center take shape under the direction of developer Jeff Ammons, he found an interested partner. “He gave us artificial turf to work with so we didn’t have to go indoors in bad weather,” Ransbury says. “It worked

out beautifully. We’re super happy with the facility here. It’s great for us.”

The arena was completed at the end of 2019, opening the door for a hockey school in 2020. “Throughout the year, families would come to shadow because their kids were homeschooling during COVID, and we started enrolling,” says Avallone, who teaches language arts and social studies. “By the end of the year, we had 20 students.”

A NATURAL TRANSITION Among those who started in the fall of 2021 was Dominik Cespedes, a 13-year-old hockey lover who plays in the Carolina Junior Hurricanes program. His father, Mark, could see that Dominik didn’t have the same passion in the classroom that he showed on the ice. “Every morning when I would take him to school, I could tell he was dreading going there,” Mark Cespedes says. “He just wanted it to be over. So it was a really easy decision for me, just to be able to take him somewhere I knew he was looking forward to going. He’s got a smile on his face when I drop him off, he’s got a smile on his face when I pick him up. It’s money well spent.”

Leaving his traditional middle school environment came easily for Dominik. “It’s a little bit strange that it’s the same kids in every class, but I like it,” says the rising eighth-grader. “At the start of the year, I kind of struggled a little bit, but I’m kind of getting it together now.”

The hockey part of the equation came naturally. “I’ve been a lot stronger on my skates since I started because I’m skating every day,” Dominik says. “My stride has gotten much better. My shot has improved drastically. It’s helped my game a lot.”

PRIORITIZING ACADEMICS Ransbury operates another Accelerator School in the Washington, D.C. Metro area, and plans to open schools in Southern California and Houston in the coming year. “We can only go so fast, and we really want to control the quality,” Ransbury says. “If we have one bad school, it may tarnish everything.”

The school takes care to keep the emphasis on academics in every way possible. After a weekend of travel with their club teams, students sometimes aren’t at the top of their academic game when Monday morning rolls around. “We can help them manage their travel time and their energy,” Avallone says. “If a student is struggling, or if he’s been traveling a lot, we’ll say, ‘We need you to come into the classroom tomorrow morning instead of going to training,’ The coaches are 100% on board. It’s not like there’s any repercussions to that.”

Accelerator School graduated its first four students in the spring, taking another step in building a reputation that embraces the student side of student-athletes. “Relationships are very important to us. It’s teachers and coaches, students and parents all working together,” Avallone says. “We’re taking advantage of the students’ passion, whether it’s hockey or soccer. We don’t think you have to sacrifice. We want to make sure the education is as good as it can possibly be.”