Cross Country Meet Scoring Tutorial

Here’s a quick tutorial on how XC meets are scored. Each team enters seven runners into the race. As each runner finishes the race, they are given a number according to what place they finish, and that number is their score for the team. For instance, if you finish 1st, you have a score of 1 point. If you finish 24th, you have a score of 24.

A team's first five runners (doesn't matter which runners, just the first five that finish) are counted toward the team's total score. If the first five runners come in 2nd, 7th, 8th, 12th, and 18th, then the team's score is 47 (which is relatively low in a competitive race). So, the lower your score, the better.  The team with the lowest score wins. 

But, that's not all. The other two runners (who come in after the first five runners on the team) do not count toward their team's score, but they can still help their team by making another team's score higher. If the seventh runner comes in before any of the first five from another team, then the other team's score becomes higher because their runners have bigger finishing scores. Remember, you want your score to be low.  At the 2010 District Championships the Wolverines sixth and seventh place runners—Corey Rosenberg and Scott McPeek—placed 19^th and 20^th overall to finish ahead of every other team’s fifth runner and helped push West Potomac to the District title, 5 points ahead of runner-up Lake Braddock.

If teams are tied after the first five runners finish the race, the team with the best finishing sixth place runner breaks the tie.  This happened at the state meet in 2009.  The West Potomac girls were tied with Maggie Walker for 4^th place; but because the Wolverines sixth place runner—Colleen Boyle—finished ahead of Maggie Walker’s 6^th place runner, West Po took fourth place in the state and Maggie Walker settled for 5^th.

If a team does not field at least 5 runners, then none of that team’s runners count in the team scoring.  For example – if a team entered only 1 runner in a race and that runner finished third, that runner would not count in the team scoring.  The fourth place runner would be counted as 3^rd, the fifth place runner would count as 4^th and so on.  In some races teams are allowed to enter more than seven runners.  In these races only the top seven runners count in the scoring.

Sound complicated?  It isn’t. Just remember that passing other runners makes your team score lower, and the lowest team score wins.