Just out of curiosity, are there any athletes in the history of cross country or distance running that were incredible football players too?
I'm considering going out for the football team this year to help fill numbers for a declining team. My best 5k time is around a 17:10 and in football I would more than likely play running back for our team.
Are there any examples of athletes that have done both in the past?
Coley Candaele won three California state football championships as quarterback and was state player of the year his senior year. He also ran a 4:06 mile.
Dan Kremske. Wide Receiver in high school, didn't run XC. Good, not great 800 runner. Qualified for the Olympic Marathon trials this year.
Paul mcmullen
Phil Fondacaro wrote:
Coley Candaele won three California state football championships as quarterback and was state player of the year his senior year. He also ran a 4:06 mile.
Wow, that's really impressive! Quite an all-around athlete to be able to do that.
When I was in high school in Illinois in the late 90s I remember this guy, Nick Setta?, who was all state in the 800m and XC, I think. And he set the state record for longest field goal. He went on to play in college I'm pretty sure.
Wikipedia knows:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Setta
That high jump is pretty amazing, too. Super all around athlete.
Trevor Van Ackeren ran for Princeton and was a five sport athlete. He won the high school hesiman award, ran for princeton and then ran professional for a while with NYNJTC. Field goal kicker in HS for the state runner up team in PA.
According to TFRRS has personal bets of 3:42.83 and 1:50
My high school coach said he was the Deion Sanders of his football team and was an 800m guy in track, then moved up in college to 5k/10k.
My sophomore year of HS, our XC captain was the kicker for the football team. He was pretty bad though. Once kicked a ball right into the backs of the linemen.
There isn't a snowballs chance in hell that you will make it through XC and football without either getting hurt, performing very poorly or getting mentally/physically burnt out.
17:10 is pretty good, and probably puts you higher in the state then where you would be at football. So I would guess you are a better runner than football player. But do what you want, just not both.
Ford Palmer played football through college, he's now a 3:36 1500 runner. One of the top XC runners in the state when I was in HS also played football and basketball, not a superstar but ran low 15's and eventually low 14's in college.
Antonio Vega
I heard Tim "Lucho" Luchinske Waggoner say he was all-state in football.
CuriousAthlete wrote:
Just out of curiosity, are there any athletes in the history of cross country or distance running that were incredible football players too?
I'm considering going out for the football team this year to help fill numbers for a declining team. My best 5k time is around a 17:10 and in football I would more than likely play running back for our team.
Are there any examples of athletes that have done both in the past?
Ran cross and played football in H.S. and had two other teammates who did so as well. 3 members of our 4x8 relay played football and ran cross. We enjoyed cross, but we were better football players and much better track runners. Our main gold was breaking the 4x8 national record and we used cross to keep in shape for running. I also (sort of) played D1 football at a major ranked program. I was a football walk on in college and did not run cross. In H.S., I was a wide receiver, defense back and occasional punter. We did not have a lot of kids on our team, so lot of us played both ways. In college, I was on the depth chart on special teams and what they now call a slot receiver. I was a good receiver for my high school league, but my league was not a football powerhouse. In college, most people thought I was crazy for attempting to make the team. I weighed 3 pound less than Rudy from Notre Dame; however, I was about 3 inches taller and perhaps a better athlete. But, unlike Rudy, I never played in a regular season game. The track did not like scholarship, albeit a very partial scholarship athletes playing football, but he was so certain I would not make the team that when I told him I was trying out for the football team, he said good luck.
My son also played football and ran with the cross country team in H.S., but the state rules did not allow H.S. athletes to do two sports at the same. He was only able to train with the XC team and snuck himself into 2 XC invitational meets.
Remember that NFL films clip:
Trainer talking about injured kicker: "Coach, I'm not sure he can play"
Bill Parcells: "He doesn't have to play, he just has to kick"
I don't know about high level but a man I know ran cross country and played football for LSU i think back in the 60s (90% sure)
The main reason nobody cares wrote:
I don't know about high level but a man I know ran cross country and played football for LSU i think back in the 60s (90% sure)
I don't know what a high level is, or what cross country of football are, and I'm not sure if I knew a man or not, or what a man is, and it was either LSU or CSU or ASU or USA or somewhere, I'm not sure where, at either some point in the past or future, or maybe never, (0% to 100% unsure)
came on here just to say Ford Palmer.. glad someone beat me to it. Dude's an unreal athlete. #NECRiseUp
40 years ago our football coach talked our number one runner into going out for football and running back instead of running XC. Our football team stunk and our number one runner still rode the pine (back then the benches were made of wood) all season. Conversely, by changing the leadership of our XC team, we improved to 2nd in our division of our state after being 5th the two previous years. Further, even as a senior our ex #1 runner rode the bench, not because he wasn't good enough but because the football coach had managed to convince even better athletes to play and ol' #1 was too stubborn to switch positions.
I'm not sure exactly what qualifies as “incredible" but in TX the was a guy who graduated from a Houston area HS in 2008 named Blake Shaw who was an 800 runner (149 in HS) and also was one of the stars of his football team as well. He would do cross races after the football season was over which and would usually make it to state just based off of talent alone. I think his best finish at state xc was 12th? He went on to for USC and broke 4 for the indoor mile in college.
Forrest Gump