Hence the "can't you?". I wasn't sure, because I wasn't knowledgeable. Thanks for letting me know, though! .
Hard, but not impossible.
This is what I was referring to.
Uh.. I was thinking of physics. I think chemistry is a junior class in our district.
Freshman science (two semesters) is a semester of chemistry and a semester of physics, but the biggest thing we do is melt a penny and something else together creating an alloy, and melting sulfur powder and copper shavings (think iron wool) together to form a ball of Copper Sulfide. We don't do advanced stuff.. it's just "Physical Science".
The order of science classes was a bit more malleable in my high school. There were about 1/5 kids who took Physics before Chemistry, but still took Chemistry the next year. About 10 people in my class took Biology their freshman years; the rest of them took it at a variety of times. There were alternating groups of classes that were offered in this order: Zoology/Botany, Biochemistry/Anatomy & Physiology, Ecology/Marine Biology which two or three of the people in my class took with me (starting sophomore year).
Physical Science is a pretty typical freshman science course. I didn't take it in high school, but the class I took in middle school was pretty insignificant compared to the complexity involved with chemistry and physics.