XC or Soccer

Do what you like and what you think will be the most fun. Soccer is a great sport but right now it seems that you like running better.

Too fast for soccer

I was similar except I did sprints. Learn about the coaches and players for both, and figure out which suits you better

I quit soccer after my freshman year of HS and never looked back. At the time I was really sick of soccer and my team, and I found that I fit in much better with the XC crowd than the soccer guys. I've never once regretted giving it up for running. But soccer is still fun, I played intramural futsal in the off season between XC and track in college, so you don't have to give it up completely.

It's really up to you.

When in doubt, stick with soccer. You can become a full time runner whenever you want and still reach your potential, but once you stop playing soccer, it's pretty much over. You can't afford to stop your ball skill development, and you'll need to work your way back into a team. I played soccer through college and didn't become a distance runner until my mid 20s. Still ran in the 2:20s for the marathon.

It's your choice, but you gane to a running message board. I played soccer until my frosh year of hs. I stopped as I thought that I woukd be a good runner because of what ai had watched my brother do in hs and knew that doing both with school would be very hard for me. I also lacked a solid team and when joining newer ones i realized that so many of these players were selfish and lacked the drive to compete. This infuriated me because I wanted to win and when someone was not giving their all I couldn't stand it. XC put it on myself it's purely me that chases my goals. "How good do you want to be". Thats what I constantly aak myself. I don't know if i could do that in soccer.

If you like running do running if you like to compete do running those times are great for a freshmen. If you wanna stay in a comfort zone with soccer and your friends do it.

Give soccer another year for the reasons stated above. If you find it's not fun and you're not progressing the way you like then switch to XC in your junior year.

Can you do both? Just be transparent with the cross country coach and say you’ll be at practice as much as possible but sometimes soccer takes precedence? If not, do soccer for one more year as the last poster suggested, run on your own on the off days or even around practice, and still do track. If soccer isn’t fun anymore, then you can devote your entire junior and senior years to running.

This is almost exactly what I did. I played soccer for as long as possible, because it was fun, but I knew I was destined for running. So, after sophomore track season, I committed fully to running.

Do what you want to do! I think soccer would be a good way of breaking up the monotony of training year round.

Soccer practice is basically 2 hours of either sprint intervals, fartleks, or jogging. It’s not as specific to distance/MD running as doing XC in the fall, but it’ll keep you conditioned and fast. In highschool we had 3-4 sub 5:00 mile soccer guys, 2 of which were deeply under 5:00, and the rest of the soccer team could all at least break 6:00.

I was in a similar situation to you as a freshman only with Football instead of Soccer. I ended up choosing football which I have regretted ever since. Moral of the story: choose XC.

I am a freshman too and quit soccer for running this year. I used to a great soccer player, but in the area I lived there was no room to grow. I think if I lived in a bigger city with better soccer teams I could still be playing at a high level, but I knew there was nowhere for me to go in soccer living in my region. If you live in a dry soccer city I would say go with running because reaching your potential in soccer wouldn't be possible.

If you want to be a collegiate athlete definitely go with track/xc.