Former soccer player with no XC background runs 17:20 (female)

Bib 379 looks a bit like Shalane Flanagan.

Any soccer program worth its salt runs its players a lot in practice, stadium steps, sprints, longer distance stuff, so not that strikingly different from miler training. Just add some more mileage.

She's a pretty cool story. It will be interesting to see what she can do on the track.

https://goxavier.com/images/2021/9/7/2021_08_21_XavierHeadshots_1356.png?width=1920&height=1080&mode=crop&quality=80&format=jpg

Is your daughter Melissa Riggins?

Is your daughter Melissa Riggins?

stong work wrote:

A College soccer player that never ran a race in her life ran 17:20 to take 1st place at the Butler Twilight Meet last weekend.

Xavier's Rachel Butler had too many concussions from playing soccer and made the difficult decision to stop playing. She decided to join the XC team.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/college/xavier/xaviersports/2021/09/10/concussions-ender-her-soccer-career-now-shes-top-runner-xavier/5750638001/https://www.tfrrs.org/results/xc/18468/Bulter_Twilight_Meet

Yep had similar athlete...at 18 she gave up soccer trained for 2 months placed 2nd at u20 Aussie nats. 6 months later was 1st Aussie at junior world xc in 2015. 2019 she placed 45 at world xc open women has run 32:26 and 1:11.47 so not surprised.

Good luck to her.

This is Jim Kiler wrote:

So that makes two soccer-players-turned-runners, as I was told would happen en' masse over 30 years ago.

It will never happen in large quantities because most soccer players hate the sport of running.

Every high schools’ girls’ soccer programs (large schools) have at least four to five girls who could easily run varsity xc if they trained for it over the summer. In fact, at many schools, these girls would be top five.

zxcvzxvc wrote:

Any soccer program worth its salt runs its players a lot in practice, stadium steps, sprints, longer distance stuff, so not that strikingly different from miler training. Just add some more mileage.

This is not necessarily true.

The bulk of running for soccer players should come from playing the game itself. It is true that they do fitness work but most of that is running that mimics what will be encountered in game situations. The running in soccer is a lot of starts and stops, changes in direction, lateral shuffling, walking, jogging, full out sprints, etc. Stadium steps and distance running is not commonly done by any coach worth his salt. He will want his players on the ball as much as possible in training. There is no substitute for playing the game.

For collegiate players, particularly those that play D1 soccer, are given a fitness packet to do in the summer. There may be some hill sprints and distance running in the packet. There is also a lot of other types of running as well as weights for the upper and lower body. When the players report to campus for preseason fitness testing, there is usually a battery of tests.

Every coach is a bit different and some may include a tied mile as part of the testing. This is uncommon, though. Also sometimes used, but also not that common, is a 12-minute test. Coaches want to see how far the players run in 12 minutes. Mile times and distance covered in 12 minutes are not that important so as I said, they're not commonly used. They can only give a general idea of the fitness levels of a player but are not good indicators of sustained anaerobic levels. The most commonly used test is the "yoyo test." Many know this as the beep test. This is commonly used because it is an accurate indicator of fitness levels to play the game of soccer. It can also give an approximation of VO2 max.

Another test that is sometimes used test is the 300-yard shuttle where the athlete runs 12 x 25 yard sprints.

Something that tests maximal aerobic capacity, and that is brutal, is the "Bronco Test." This involves running to and from a start line to 20, 40, and 60 m marks, 5 times without a break to a total of 1200 meters.

Other tests are usually focused on agility with speed.

In actuality. soccer players are probably better suited for 400 & 800 meter running and the types of sustained aerobic efforts that those events require.

Soccer and running go hand in hand. My daughters play competitive soccer and run XC. They are the fittest kids on the soccer team and the fastest kids on the XC team. They run half the mileage (or less) of some of the other teams in town, but still beat them routinely. The nice thing about soccer is it functions as interval and speed training that the XC don't really get.

joed|rt wrote:

Soccer and running go hand in hand. My daughters play competitive soccer and run XC. They are the fittest kids on the soccer team and the fastest kids on the XC team. They run half the mileage (or less) of some of the other teams in town, but still beat them routinely. The nice thing about soccer is it functions as interval and speed training that the XC don't really get.

Half the milage including all the running they do in soccer? Or half the mileage outside soccer?

Track & Field and XC owes a lot to a baseball coach in Utah. Why? Because he cut Ed Eyestone from the baseball team as a sophomore. Ed wanted to do something so he joined the track team. The rest is history.

I saw what Rachel Butler did last night in the 10000 at the Penn Relays and remembered this thread.

Butler ran 34:07 for 4th place. Not an outstanding time but decent for someone that has never competed at that distance before and is running her first season of track. On her tfrrs profile she has 4 races on the track not including last night's race at Penn. Last weekend at Virginia in the 2nd 5000 that she has competed in, she took 3rd in in 16:19. This was obviously not in the elite race that Tuohy dropped the 15:14 in. It does not appear that Butler ran indoor track. She did get her 5K XC time down to 16:50. And went 20:40 for 6K. She was a DNF at the NCAA regional XC meet.

Speculation is kind of cool but it would be interesting to see what Butler could have done if she had run XC and track rather than played soccer. Having never competed prior to her senior year of college, she has been pretty impressive. She is a senior and is more than likely graduating. If she doesn't graduate, or attends graduate school, she should have eligibity remaining. XC & track really don't get a whole lot of money for school unless they're in the stratosphere of someone like Tuohy but if Butler enjoys the sport, it would be cool to see her compete another year. She more than likely still has a lot of room for improvement when considering what she has done in such a short period of time.

Most of us Old guys; remember that Ovett and Coe had youth soccer backgrounds.

Worked out well for both !