Sammy Smith is a World Cup performer in soccer … and cross-country skiing

Sammy Smith is one of the nation’s emerging two-sport athletes with a rare combination.

She is an elite soccer player — a U-17 World Cup goal scorer and a Stanford Cardinal freshman. She is also the only teen on the senior national team in cross-country skiing.

On this week’s agenda is the start of Smith’s first NCAA Tournament. Stanford, a No. 3 seed and last year’s national runner-up, hosts UC Santa Barbara on Friday. The tournament runs through a championship game on Dec. 9, the first day of Stanford’s fall quarter exam week.

Smith could spend much of Stanford’s winter quarter, which begins Jan. 6, doing classwork while crisscrossing Europe for World Cup ski races. Possibly at the world championships in Norway in late February and early March, too.

Smith’s goal is to play each sport at the highest level possible for as long as possible.

As one of five women on the U.S. cross-country skiing A team, she is in early contention to make the 2026 Olympic team of up to eight women. That roster will be finalized in January 2026.

“I want to do everything I can to help the (soccer) team and to hopefully win a national championship,” said Smith, who has played in 12 of Stanford’s 18 matches as a sub. “So right now, that’s been my focus, and is my absolute focus until the season’s over. Obviously, I try and do extra training when I can. I love fitness, so the extra running outside of practice, and the additional training I do, it’s both very beneficial for soccer, because I think it pays dividends on the field, but it also is putting me in a better place for any opportunities this winter.”

Smith split her childhood between Boise and, in winter months, the slopes of Sun Valley.

She benefited from athletic parents: mom Kristin rowed for Stanford and won the 2008 half-Ironman triathlon world championship for the 40-44 age group. Dad Steve played soccer at Duke.

Smith made the most of being a middle child. She tagged along with older sister Logan, who is a junior on the Stanford soccer team. She was pushed by younger brother Tucker, a Boise High senior who this year did Alpine skiing races in Austria and Italy, then co-captained a state championship soccer team.

The family also started Go Big Inc., a non-profit that’s an acronym for “giving opportunity by inspiring gratitude.” Go Big helps underprivileged kids in the Boise community. Events have included a book drive and swim clinic.

On skis before age 1 1/2, two of Smith’s favorite words as a toddler were “self” — as in do it myself — and “more.”

“Maybe there was some genetic advantage there,” dad Steve said, “but a lot of it I think came from an internal motivation.”

They got an approved cast. She took part in the October 2019 U.S. under-15 girls’ national team talent identification camp while in eighth grade.

Smith won Idaho state high school titles in soccer, cross-country running and track (in the 800m, mile and two-mile).

In the winters in Sun Valley, she did both moguls skiing and cross-country skiing before ultimately focusing on the latter.

On Oct. 17, 2022, Smith was officially named to the U.S. cross-country skiing development team and scored two goals in a 13-minute span in her U.S. international soccer debut at the U-17 World Cup in India.

She traveled back from that event — 45 hours including stops, plus a 12.5-hour time zone change — went to one day of school, then drove five hours to Lewiston to help her team win the state cross-country running title.

Sammy Smith (6, middle) is congratulated after scoring in the 2022 U-17 World Cup. (FIFA via Getty Images)

Smith and Diggins also paraglided together in Italy last January. Then in June, Smith completed the Broken Arrow Skyrace, a 14-mile mountain-climbing and trail-running event in Palisades Tahoe, California. Diggins covered the same course the previous day, but did the loop three times for a total distance of nearly 43 miles for her annual “Big Stupid.”

“I’m a big adrenaline person, she’s a big adrenaline person,” Smith said.

Smith’s international cross-country skiing schedule this winter will hinge on her performance at the U.S. Championships in early January in Anchorage.

On the World Cup, she aspires to make a sprint semifinal for the first time, which means placing in the top 12. No U.S. male or female cross-country skier has ever finished that high in any individual World Cup race as a teenager. Smith turns 20 next September.

Already in this Olympic cycle, Smith has played in the U-17 World Cup in soccer, made her senior World Cup debut in cross-country skiing and matriculated at Stanford. A big goal is to cap the quadrennium at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games.

“The Olympics have always been my dream,” she said, “so if I had the chance to go, that’d be pretty incredible.”

Eleven members of the 2014 U.S. Olympic cross-country skiing team, including its last active skier, reunited in Park City.