XC Meet Scoring

The score of a cross-country meet is determined by adding up the finishing place of each team's first 5 runners. 15 points is a perfect score, if the first 5 places are all captured by one team. The 6th and 7th runners of each team can increase the scores of the other competing teams if they finish in front of any of the other teams' scoring runners. The 8th and subsequent runners for each team will not be involved in the team's scoring. 

The team with the lowest score wins the meet. 
 

Ties: In the rare case there is a tie in points with the first 5 runners between competing teams, the place of the 6th runner will be used to break the tie. The team with the faster 6th runner wins the tie. If a team does not have a 6th runner the one with one wins automatically. In the case both tied teams have only 5 runners then the score is based on the top 4 runners of each team, with the lower score wining.

Teams w/ < 5 runners: Will not score in the meet. They forfeit the meet. However, the runners they do have are able to run as individuals against their own times.
 

Generally, each team can only have 7 runners in a varsity race, but in non-varsity races, a team can have as many runners as needed to allow everyone to compete. Therefore, all members of each team may compete in a cross-country meet, up through the SCVAL League Finals.

As an example, if two teams are competing and one team finishes 1 through 5 and the other team finishes 6 through 10, then the first team would win the meet 15 to 40.

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Dual Meets: In a dual meet, if one team take the top 3 places, they automatically win, no matter how far back their 4th and 5th runners finish. This is because their score cannot be worse than 29 (1+2+3+11+12), while the other team's score can be no better than 30 (4+5+6+7+8). In dual meets a team can be shutout if their 7 runners finish in the top 7 places resulting in a score of 15-50. The lowest possible score in a dual meet is 50, but in multi=team meets or invitationals it can be lower.

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