For Carroll Academy's Players, Home is Not Always a Haven HUNTINGDON, Tenn. - Carroll Academy warmed up on one end of the court. Sacred Heart of Jesus, a private Roman Catholic high school in Jackson, Tenn., warmed up on the other. The thump, thump, thump of basketballs bouncing on the wood floor echoed through the vast emptiness of the Jackson Community College gym. One side of the gym had a smattering of fans for Sacred Heart. The bleachers set aside for Carroll Academy's Lady Jaguars were virtually empty. The nine girls on the team usually outnumber their fans in the stands. "That tells you all you need to know," said Randy Hatch, the day-to-day leader of Carroll Academy, a school in Huntingdon administered by the juvenile court. That's why we're here. If their parents had been there all along, maybe we wouldn't be here. Right now, we're the only family they got. Summer, a 17-year-old senior, wore jersey No. She held a basketball on her hip and looked downcourt. Though one of her juvenile offenses involved fighting, the white scar over her right eye was a result of an unintentional head butt from an opposing player a month earlier, in early January. Summer had wobbled to the bench, bleeding, and passed out into her coach's arms. An ambulance carried her to the hospital down the street. Carroll Academy lost that game, 62-4. Summer watched Sacred Heart's warm-up shots carom off the rim. For once, she saw no imposingly tall or overtly talented girls. "We can win this game, if we try hard," Summer said with the breezy lilt of a songbird. Oh, No. Carroll Academy. Summer's bedroom - the one at her grandmother's house in the hills outside of town, with the bed she usually shares with her son and sometimes with her mother - has wood paneling and a bare light bulb attached to a ceiling fan. The room is stranded between childhood and adulthood. There are pictures of Summer as a little girl, a sweet grin under freckled cheeks. She used to do ballet, play soccer and softball, and participate in beauty pageants. There is an "It's a Boy!" banner on the wall and a Pack "n Play playpen in the corner. It was a Friday night, and 8-month-old DaMarion was sprawled on the unmade bed. The house smelled of cigarette smoke. The curtains were mostly drawn, and there was a mattress in the dining room. "Before I got pregnant, I wanted to join the Air Force," Summer said. After I do that, that would help me go to college. It was probably a long shot before she became pregnant. Summer's parents separated when she was in fourth grade. Her mother no longer works. Her father has six children with four women, and a stepdaughter with his live-in girlfriend. Summer is familiar with soup kitchens and eviction notices. A couple of years ago, with her father and a brother, she lived in the loft of a barn with no heat, electricity or water, she said. They took showers in the owner's nearby house. They moved into a sister's trailer for a while. Eventually, they moved to a trailer in nearby McKenzie. Summer sometimes spent nights with cousins in what some call the projects, a den of poverty. "I never blame anyone else for the choices I make," Summer said. But I do think if I was in a better environment, I'd be a better person. Drinking turned to drug use - marijuana at 14, and lots of experimenting with everything from cocaine to hydrocodone, Summer said. She has crushed and snorted Xanax and Adderall. She can list street prices of various drugs and explain where to find them. Last spring, she got into fights on consecutive days, the second one at school. That got her into the juvenile court system. She was placed on probation and under house arrest. She was already pregnant, by a longtime boyfriend, a former Carroll Academy student who is now 21. His only job since high school was a short stint at the drive-in restaurant Sonic.