Running between high school and college?

Running club cross country will not affect eligibility at all but if you accept prize money you will NOT be allowed to run in college.

Careful, I would look up the ncaa rulebook and see. There are some restrictions on eligibility and what you do between HS and college.

Thanks for the responses guys.

Also, does anyone on here know much about NIRCA by chance?

The biggest thing you need to know is that your clock starts ticking once you enroll in school full time. It doesn't affect your eligibility to run for a club, but the number of years/semesters (depending on division) you have available to use will be dwindling.

And to be brutally honest with you. If you dont do it your freshman year I dont see you: 1. joining your soph yr or 2. staying with it. Having a year of "normal" college, along with lesser training from just running club will leave you unprepared and in for a shock come your soph year if you actually do decide to go for it.

Think about the level of commitment you are willing to have for running and if you are actually committed enough, go big from the start. It will be worth it if this is what you really want.

If you want a lower level of commitment then yea go club and keep your love alive for the sport still, but dont tease yourself thinking it will be easy to just hop onto the varsity level come sophomore yr.

All of this is coming from my own perspective, the club team here is no where near as dedicated or committed to running as the varsity team and none of them would be able to make it at the varsity level. Maybe your school is different, I wouldn't know, I'm just giving you a heads up with the knowledge I have.

Yeah as others have said you will probably not join your sophomore year if you take off your freshman. Why would you want to do that anyway? If you are concerned about having an extra year to run you know you can just redshirt your freshman year. If you are concerned about the time it will take and are worried about school freshman year is the best time to run. Also being in a sport usually helps your academics due to giving your life a schedule and not allowing you to party all the time.

I had a number of friends (3) who ended up joining my team as sophmores and using eligibility up. They were hurdle and 800 guys though. Distance runners I knew who wanted to try this ended up not being able to meet our very lienent walk on standard. 4mi on a track at 6minute pace.

I thought the ruling was you have 5 years to complete your eligibility beginning from your first year of college. If you don't run your freshman year of school, but run sophomore year then you would have 4 years. is that right?