Young Olympic-level athletes are heading back to school. Here’s how they balance homework, sports, and life.

From the time she was in seventh grade, eMjae Frazier more or less went to night school.

The gymnast from Gloucester Township, N.J., trained daily at Parkettes, a highly regarded gym in Allentown. Depending on traffic, it could take up to 2½ hours each way.

For most kids, school is their full-time job. But Frazier was not most kids.

For elite athletes, cyber schools can be a lifesaver, a way to balance training and competition with academics in a way that traditional schools do not allow. But the schools’ quality can be uneven and produce academic outcomes that lag those of their peers’.

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Online school paid off for Frazier. She was named a member of the U.S. gymnastics team starting in 2019. And despite tearing her ACL, LCL, and PCL that October, she came back, earning a trip to the world championships in 2021.

Frazier is one of five kids, and her older sister, Margzetta, 23, also was an elite gymnast. So their parents knew the drill, and Frazier enrolled in Reach Cyber Charter School.

Online school came early for Isabeau Levito, the 2023 U.S. figure skating champion. She started in fourth grade.

Now a junior in high school, Levito, 16, from Mount Holly, N.J., is taking two AP classes as well as honors courses with International VLA.

The program allowed her to take off time in March for the World Figure Skating Championships, where she placed fourth.

So was it hard leaving a brick-and-mortar school so young?

“I think I was just really excited to spend my days at the rink, because I have this very close friend,” Levito said. “We both go to the rink all day every day, and she and I are the same age. Basically, we call each other sisters at this point. So she was also going to get homeschooled, so I was just so excited to spend all day at the rink with her. And then skating was just the bonus.”

Her cyber school gives deadlines, but making up work is a given. She spends eight hours a day at the rink on weekdays, with half-days on Saturdays, so she catches up on schoolwork on the weekends.

“It’s funny, because ... whenever I’m overdue in an assignment, it counts as a temporary zero,” she said. “So you’ll look at my grade, and you’ll be like, ‘20%?’

“And I’m like, ‘They are just temporary zeros, the 33 assignments I’m behind in are temporary zeros.’”

Morgan Hurd, 22, dealt with overdue assignments, too.

The Middletown, Del., gymnast trained 40 hours a week for years. In sixth grade, when they made it to developmental camp, “which is kind of like one of the first steps into getting onto national team,” they said, it was time to find a flexible school.

“My junior year, I was taking AP classes,” said Hurd, who attended International Connections Academy. “I believe I was taking, like, four. And then I had unexpectedly made Worlds. I wasn’t expecting it, so I didn’t get ahead on my school. And then our schedule is so rigorous there that I didn’t really have the time to do school.

“So I came back and had like 90 overdue lessons and there was like two months left in the school year. I was like, ‘I can’t do so much.’ So I dropped all APs and just took an honors class.”

But not only did Hurd unexpectedly make the world team in 2017, but she won the all-around. The next year, she won bronze in the all-around and silver on floor, and was part of the team gold.

Casey Kaufhold, 19, an archer from Lancaster, began shooting young. It was the family sport.

“I started competing when I was 8,” Kaufhold said. “But I started shooting just for fun, like in the backyard, when I was 3 — with parents’ supervision.

“I shoot an Olympic recurve style, which is kind of a more advanced version of what you’d see like Katniss Everdeen or Hawkeye movies and stuff. During our outdoor season, we shoot 70 meters at a 122-centimeter diameter target. And then indoors is usually more in the winter [and] we shoot 18 meters at a 40-centimeter diameter target.”

Translation: From 70 meters away, she is aiming for an area the size of a softball. Without a scope.

Now she is a five-time U.S. champion, a 2020 Olympian, and, in 2021, became the first American woman in 33 years to win a medal (silver) in recurve at the World Archery Championships.

Kaufhold had the benefit of being able to train close to home, at her parents’ business, Lancaster Archery Supply. But she competes about 20 times a year all over the world.

She didn’t have to go far to find an online option for school, though. She enrolled in the online program offered through her public school, Conestoga Valley High School. This allowed her to switch from online to in-person, depending on her athletic schedule.

She said the online program was “not quite the same stuff I would have liked to take in person; I am a very creative and artistic person. So there were some art classes that I would have liked to take, but I wasn’t able to because [you] can’t really do art online. So I kind of saved those for my senior year when I was back in person.”

While Frazier worked to fit everything in, school was important to her. When it came time to commit to a college, she chose the University of California, Berkeley, where she is a psychology major. Now a sophomore, Frazier, 19, earned Cal’s first perfect 10 score (on floor) this spring and also broke her school’s all-around record.

“I was really focused on finding a good school of academics and Cal is the No. 1 public university [in the United States, according to U.S. News and World Report], and their gymnastics is on the rise, which, to me, I was thinking about, ‘How amazing would [it] be to become a part of their history with gymnastics?’” she said.

Kaufhold also started college last fall, at Texas A&M, a school known in archery circles as one of the best. She and her brother, Conner Kaufhold, are both on the team.

She is studying visualization in the architecture school and hopes to become a graphic designer.

But another Olympics is around the corner. So Kaufhold is taking this year off from college and is training at home in Lancaster.

“Hopefully, as long as everything goes well with qualifying, I’ll do [Olympics in] 2024, 2028,” Kaufhold said. “And then, depending on how I do in those, also 2032. So it could be four total by the end of my career.”

Hurd committed to the University of Florida at age 14 and later deferred college to continue international competition. When she finally went, majoring in English with a minor in sociology, the workload actually eased.

“NCAA rules are that you can only train 20 hours per week. And that’s including, like, lift hours [weight training] as well. And any team meeting.”

Nearing the end of her K-12 schooling, Levito wants to go to college. She’s not yet sure when or for what, but she might want to become a sports psychologist.

» READ MORE: South Jersey’s Isabeau Levito is already a U.S. figure skating champion. Next up, the world?

Despite years of online school, Frazier always kept up with her friends at Timber Creek Regional High School in Sicklerville, N.J.

“I always went to football games,” she said. “I always went to homecoming.

“So, honestly ... the only thing I missed out on was actually just being in a building going to school.”

» READ MORE: Morgan Hurd, Delaware's unique (and bespectacled) gymnastics world champion (from 2017)

She finished all requirements in cyber school during her junior year. But halfway through senior year, she got wistful for the full experience.

“I missed my friends and I wanted to go to prom, senior trip, like all that stuff,” she said. “So after Worlds, I decided that I wanted to go back to school.

“It was really funny, because when I actually got back to school, when I was in the building, a lot of my friends were like, ‘Oh, hey, eMjae!’ and then be like, ‘Why are you here?’”