Cross Country Scoring

Okay.  You have trained hard.  You are at the starting line.  So, how does the scoring work??

 

For individuals it is easy.  The winner is the first to the finish.  Second is the second to the finish, and so on. 

 

But there is team scoring too.  How does that work?

 

First of all, for a team to score it needs at least 5 runners and at most 7 runners to finish the race.  You can have more than 7, but not less than 5.  If you are under 5, then there is no team scoring and you are all running as individuals only.  All complete teams beat an incomplete team.

 

So, here is how it works.  First you wait until the entire race is finished and everyone who is suppose to get a medal gets their medal.  Then, you remove all of the runners from teams with less than 5 runners as well as any team's 8, 9, 10, etc., runners.  Thus, for any team, only 5, 6, or 7 runners take part of the scoring.  Then, you renumber eveyone who is left.

 

Example:  Here is a simple race with 12 finishers from 3 teams.  A1, B1, B2, C1, A2, B3, A3, C2, A4, B4, A5, B5

 

Team C only had 2 runners in the race, so for team scoring they are deleated.  The new list is A1, B1, B2, A2, B3, A3, A4, B4, A5, B5.

 

You now number your list starting from 1.  So A1 = 1, B1 = 2, B2 = 3, A2 = 4, B3 = 5, A3 = 6, A4 = 7, B4 = 8, A5 = 9, B5 = 10

 

Add up each team's 5 lowest numbers:  For Team A: 1 + 4 + 6 + 7 + 9 = 27   For Team B:  2 + 3 + 5 + 8 + 10 = 28.  Lowest score wins, so Team A wins!

 

What about a tie??  Ties are broken by whoever has the faster 6th person.  If you have only 5 runners, you can NEVER win a tie.

 

Now, what about the 6th and 7th runners?  They also get a number, but theirs do not get added in.  So why bother??  They are called "pushers" since they "push" the runners behind them into having to take a bigger number.  Suppose that runner A6 came in before B5.  Then A6 would get 10 and force B5 to take 11.  The goal is for your pushers to "eat up" lower numbers so that your opponent must take higher numbers.

 

Unfortunatly, any runners over 7 do not count in the scoring.  You will see some big teams at the starting line with 10 or more runners, but keep in mind that only 7 of them will be part of the scoring.  Everyone else is running for a good time.

 

With many teams, the scores can get pretty high.  Suppose you have 10 full teams of 7 runners each.  That means some teams will be adding numbers like 30, 45, and 56 since it is part of their 5 lowest numbers.  There will also be times where you could be suprised.  There may be several incomplete teams or one team with many runners, and once they are removed you may get a much lower score than you expected.