A multi-sport athlete is an athlete who competes or trains two or more different sports. Most of these athletes played two or more sports from a young age – especially in high school – before deciding to usually concentrate on just one sport professionally.
Playing multiple sports appears to improve performance through development of foundational transferable athletic skills.[1][2] A large majority of elite young adult athletes, such as NCAA Division I athletes and first-round NFL draft picks, were multi-sport athletes, even if they specialized in a single sport during their professional career, and many played multiple sports even through the end of high school.[1][3][4][5] Most elite athletes who eventually specialized avoided early sports specialization, so they did not specialize or begin intensive training until they were older teenagers.[2] Elite athletes in most sports, such as track and field, weightlifting, cycling, rowing, swimming, skiing, are less likely to have done intensive training at a young age than the near-elite athletes.[1] NCAA Division I athletes tended to play multiple sports in high school, and only one in six specialized in a single sport before the age of 12.[3] In the 2015 NFL Scouting Combine, six out of seven invited college athletes were multi-sport athletes in high school.[2]
30 out of the 32 first round picks in the 2017 NFL draft were multi-sport athletes in high school.