A.E. Araiza / arizona daily star

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Elizabeth Begley has traveled to Panama, El Salvador and Mexico to play tennis. She has hit ground strokes in Scotland, sliced volleys in St. Vincent and smashed serves all over the United States.

She is on the road for more than half of the school year, she estimates. To keep up with school while developing into an elite tennis player, the 15-year-old sophomore takes classes from Laurel Springs, a distance-learning school based in Ojai, Calif. She reads textbooks on airplanes and in hotel rooms. She calls and e-mails her teachers. She writes papers and takes quizzes online.

"It's been great because we can take it with us, but then she doesn't have a lot of free time," said Begley's mother, Trish. "She trains, and all weekend long she's working on her home-schooling. It's a little tedious, but it works."

Online schooling has become popular among elite-level tennis players who frequently travel. A growing number of tennis players are joining Laurel Springs, one of the most popular distance-learning schools.

More than 35 of this year's 955 participants of the Copper Bowl Junior Tennis Championships in Tucson are enrolled in the school, which serves kindergarten through 12th grade. Professional athletes make up 40 percent of the 3,000 students, and tennis players are one of the fastest growing groups with 300, up from 75 five years ago. Another 20 percent of the enrollment are entertainers, including actors and dancers.

"Academics comes first with us, but we work with their schedule so they can feel when they're on the field that's all they have to worry about," said Laurel Springs director Marilyn Mosley Gordanier, who gave a seminar about the school at the Copper Bowl tournament.

Laurel Springs students can take off time from school, as long as they complete the 36 required class assignments, Mosley Gordanier said. The school also provides tutors and college counselors, as well as classes for gifted students.

Flexible schooling is necessary for an elite tennis player who travels extensively, players say. But they also stress that a distance-learning program is not for everyone; it requires discipline, self-motivation and hard work. Begley's Laurel Springs chemistry class has three textbooks and requires 40-50 pages of reading a day.

"They give me a lot more work than they do at regular school," said Begley, who has been attending Laurel Springs for three years. "Sometimes it takes a week to do a day."

Spencer Wolf, a 17-year-old "A" student from Coral Springs, Fla., studies for his six classes in between four hours of playing tennis and one to two hours of fitness every day. He travels to at least three tournaments a month.

"I wouldn't be able to make it (with a traditional school) because I travel so much. Laurel Springs has been great and really flexible," Wolf said, noting he can call or e-mail his teachers and hear back from them on the same day. His main teachers live in Belgium and Seattle.

There are certainly drawbacks. Trish Begley said she wants her daughter to benefit from face-to-face interaction with teachers, so Elizabeth takes two classes at Hilton Head Preparatory in Hilton Head Island, S.C., in addition to her two Laurel Springs classes. And some assignments are difficult to do outside of the classroom. Begley left a biology experiment of growing corn with her aunt in South Carolina.

"The experiments you have to do, some of them took 21 days just to grow something," said Trish Begley, who joined her daughter at the Copper Bowl. "We were never in the same place for 21 days. That's when we freaked."

Riley Blanks of Delray Beach, Fla., another player in the Copper Bowl's girls 18 division, said a distance-learning student must be responsible.

"There are so many resources and sometimes you think it's so easy to cheat because you have Google, and if you're with your parents in the same room you can totally ask them what a word means," said Blanks, who attends the University of Miami Online High School, another school popular among athletes. She says she earns A's while traveling to two tournaments a month.

"If I had to choose, I'd probably choose traditional schooling because it's easier, but that's without tennis," said Blanks, who hopes to turn pro. "With tennis, I don't know how I could juggle it all."

Distance-learning students also miss out on social aspects of traditional school. To try to compensate, Laurel Springs has its own prom and graduation and the University of Miami school has clubs and a newspaper.

"I do miss (the social interaction), but the academy I go to everyone's close to my age and we're all good friends with each other," Wolf said.

The classes also tend to be expensive. A standard high school class through Laurel Springs costs $875 per year and a lab or language class costs $950. A two-semester class at the University of Miami school costs $1,795.

That's why Carlos Bermudez's family chose iQ Academy Arizona, a free online school based in Tempe. The 15-year-old from Tucson takes online classes while he is at the United States Tennis Association National Training Academy in Boca Raton, Fla.

"We're making sure he has a strong foundation academically, and he definitely has the skills to be a pro," his father, Chuck, said.