THE CREATIVE ATHLETE

Issue 19 -- Cross-Over Sports

What Does "Cross-Over Sports" Mean?

This isn't the same as cross-training, which means using different exercise routines and activities to develop different muscle groups.

"Cross-over sports" means combining several sports or several approaches to the same sport so that you can have a longer or more fulfilling sports career.

For example, you might spend fifteen years competing in one sport and then spend another ten years competing in a different one. Or you might try competing in two or more sports simultaneously. Or you might take the skills you've learned over the years and invent a new sport which capitalizes on them.

Is It Possible to Compete in Several Sports Simultaneously?

Although there are a few athletes who excel in several sports (Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders are two examples), conventional thinking has it that the sooner you specialize, the more competitive you will be.

A highly visible example of an athlete penalized for pursing two sports is Charlie Ward, who played both football and basketball at Florida State. Even though he won the Heisman trophy in 1993, he wasn't drafted by any NFL teams because he didn't clearly state that he would choose the NFL over the NBA. With football no longer an option for him, he was selected in the first round of the 1994 NBA draft by the New York Knicks.

Most serious athletes today are expected to train year round in their chosen sport, leaving little time to pursue others. Anyone who doesn't is looked upon as a dabbler, a part-timer. The assumption is that if you train in several sports, you can't be the best in any of them. "That's a disease that starts at 7 or 8 years old with youth sports. There is tremendous pressure to make the high school team and then college ranks. You have to be part of the traveling teams, and the traveling teams are expensive, time-consuming and compete with high school sports. It's eliminated the three-sport athlete, and I don't think that's a good thing," said Art Taylor, associate director of Northeastern University's Center for Sports Study and director of its Youth Sports Programs. (1)

To counteract this trend, the New Hanover County school system in North Carolina recently told its high school coaches that they could not hold off-season workouts (other than conditioning) until three weeks before the season. Said the district's athletic director Joe Miller, ''We had some coaches, for example, telling kids if they played a summer sport, they would not make the football team. It was starting to become a habit; parents were starting to complain." (2)

Of course finding the time or the mental focus to excel in more than one athletic area can be hard to do. Examples:

• Chad Hutchinson, who plays football and baseball at Stanford, has a competitive sports schedule that runs for ten and a half months. There is just a five-day break between the two sports. Noting that pitching and quarterbacking does wear down his arm, Hutchinson said, "Anytime you play two sports, it'll take its toll physically as well as mentally.'' (3)
  
  
• Jean Paul plays football and basketball at the University of Indiana. During his first season he said, "When I came out for spring football [after playing on the school's basketball team], I was tired and weak. I wasn't as strong as all the other players were. They had been working out the whole spring. Playing two sports takes a lot out of you. You've got to be mentally ready for it." (4)

But you may want to try anyway. Here are some possible reasons to consider pursuing two or more sports:

1. Your main sport is seasonal.

This scenario is less common that it was in the past when most sports were played only three or four months a year. Short playing seasons allowed talented athletes to participate in a number of sports.

Now, only athletes in certain outdoor sports see relatively short seasons. Examples:

• Shaun Palmer is a top snowboarder and mountain biker (number one in the world in boardercross and number one in the nation in downhill mountain biking in 1997). "I don't get any time off. My snowboarding goes until April, mountain biking starts in May. Mountain biking goes until September, snowboarding starts in November." (5)
  
  
• Pentti Tofferi (who made the news in 1995 as Princess Diana's ski instructor) works for the Vail ski school in the winter and is the head golf pro at The Club at Edwards, Colorado in the summer.

Increasingly, however, competitive athletes find there isn't really an off-season. When they aren't actively competing, they are still supposed to be in training.

But not all athletes are suited to a one-dimensional focus. Some lose interest in training during the off-season. They do better by pacing themselves throughout the year with a series of different sports.

For example, many speedskaters, including Olympic gold medalist Bonnie Blair, have used cycling as a summer training aid. A few of them take the sport seriously enough to race in the summer months. Not only does it complement their skating, it offers a back-up sport as a competitive and emotional outlet (and one with more commercial opportunities).

During the summer of 1989 Blair was recruited to join the Sundance team, which was the top track cycling team in the country. "It's not that I switched sports, I added one. Cycling is a very big part of my training. I feel I'm adding competition to my training." (6)

Now speedskaters are also branching out into inline skating and vice-versa. Examples:

• Eric Flaim won a silver medal in the 1,500 meter long track race at the 1988 Calgary Olympics. In 1991 he won the 10,000 meter race at the National Inline Skating Championships. At the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics he won a silver medal in the 5,000 short track relay. He is the only man to have won Olympic medals in both long track and short track speedskating.
  
  
• KC Boutiette, a champion inline skater, won the 5,000 and 10,000 meter speedskating races at the 1994 U.S. Olympic Trials after just six weeks of skating on ice. "It's one of the best things that ever happened to our sport. We've been looking for crossovers from rollerblading for a long time," said Bill Cushman, president of the U.S. Speedskating Association. (7)

Other examples of athletes using two sports for cross-training:

• Kristin Folkl, a three-time volleyball All-American at Stanford who also was Stanford's best female basketball player in two NCAA tournaments, said this: "I know it's not for everyone, but overall, playing two sports gets easier. Your freshman year, anything you do gives you a skewed vision. I thought it was incredibly difficult then. This year, I enjoyed it a lot more. Cross-training helps. I find it keeps my body balanced. I'm not overworking the same muscles. And it's something different to think about. It helps keep me fresh." (8)
  
  
• Shane Bagehen is a top professional surfer who also snowboards. "I think it has helped my surfing in a lot of ways, and I think my surfing has helped my snowboarding in a lot of ways. ...

"I definitely would consider snowboarding some type of crosstrainng because I never get as tired surfing as I do snowboarding all day. And you actually get to spend a lot of time in the air, and that is what has helped me with my aerials in surfing." (9)

• Erin Zehntner is a top California high school athlete in two sports (cross country and swimming). "Actually it has worked out pretty good. When I get tired of running, swimming is just starting. And when I get tired of swimming, cross country is starting." (10)

2. You're too good at both to quit either.

Many talented young athletes are faced with this situation. They excel in several sports and don't want to close any doors. Therefore they train for everything. This works for awhile. But in time the competition gets tougher. When this happens, most athletes choose to focus on being the best in one sport even if it means abandoning the others. Example:

• In the early 1990s Jamie Davies was a top Colorado state competitor in two sports: gymnastics and track and field (titles in both the triple jump and the high jump). But she finally chose to abandon gymnastics (although it helped her flexibility and quickness for track) because she was growing too tall and the three hours a day that gymnastics training required was taking time away from studying.

3. You earn money at one to compete in the other.

Sometimes you love one sport, but another pays better. Examples:

• In 1993, Walter Ray Williams was both the leading money winner on the Professional Bowlers Association tour, and a five-time winner of the world horseshoe pitching championships. "All things considered, I prefer horseshoes to bowling, but a person has to make a living." (11)
  
  
• Skier Phil Mahre won the gold medal in slalom at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics. His twin Steve won the silver. They skied professionally for awhile, retired, started auto racing, and then resumed pro skiing as a way to raise money for their increasingly expensive race cars.

Said Phil, "After I won the gold medal, I kind of figured I had accomplished everything I had wanted to accomplish in skiing. And I was kind of burned out. So I retired. But I missed the competitiveness of sports and that's when I decided to enroll in a racing school.

"I kind of gave myself a five-year time frame to see if I had the talent and the desire to do this." Within three years he had won the American City Racing League driving championship.

"That's when we decided to sell all our equipment and buy a couple of Trans-Am cars. ... But we didn't have the money to go to too many other races." (12)

4. You have a chance to participate in one sport because you play another.

Sometimes your talent and visibility in one sport opens doors to other sports. These days there are celebrity auto races, golf tournaments, and ski races--open to top level athletes in other sports. While these are generally meant to be fun sidelines, many athletes take them seriously and begin training for them. Example:

• Rick Rhoden played major league baseball for 16 years before retiring in 1989. Now he is a member of the Celebrity Golf Association and has made over half a million dollars in its tournaments. In 1995 he entered six tournaments and won them all. The skills he learned as a pitcher have served him well as a golfer. "A pitcher has to learn to concentrate on every pitch. Golf is the same way." (13)

5. You're drawn to new challenges.

Sometimes you want to develop new skills and widen your horizons. Examples:

• Larry Nance became interested in drag racing while he played basketball with the Phoenix Suns and the Cleveland Cavaliers. When he retired after thirteen seasons, he became a pro driver. "This is the only thing other than basketball that has consumed me." (14)
  
  
• Jack Clark, who was a major league baseball player for ten years, took up hot rod racing. "This is like spring training all over again, and the excitement is about the same as I remember when I first started baseball. I'm a rookie and it's strange how those wonderful feelings have come back." (15)
  
  
• Julia Marslender (named Raleigh, North Carolina's top female high school athlete for 1996-97) played three sports (soccer, basketball, and tennis) and went to six state championships (four in soccer and two in tennis). "The very best part of high school athletics is the people you meet and the coaches that you play for. By playing several sports, I met more people and coaches." (16)
  
  
• Tayyiba Haneef, a top California high school athlete, also played three sports (volleyball, basketball, and track). "For me, playing three sports created more opportunities to get looked at by more schools than maybe would have looked at me if I was only in one sport." (17) She accepted a volleyball scholarship to Long Beach State.

 

1 The San Diego Union-Tribune, January 16, 1996.

2 (Greensoboro, NC) News & Record, September 10, 1997.

3 The San Francisco Chronicle, August 26, 1997.

4 The (Louisville, KY) Courier-Journal, August 29, 1995.

5 Plush, April 1997.

6 The Denver Post, June 21, 1989.

7 USA Today, January 7, 1994.

8 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 3, 1997.

9 Surfing, October, 1996.

10 The Orange County Register September 9, 1997.

11 The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 1993.

12 The Arizona Republic, May 4, 1995.

13 USA Today, July 9, 1996.

14 USA Today, April 9, 1996.

15 Rocky Mountain News, July 17, 1994.

16 The (Raleigh, NC) News and Observer June 18, 1997.

17 The Orange County Register, May 6, 1997.

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