• Welcome to Fearless Friday Bulletin Boards. Please login or sign up.

 FF is powered by:        Do Not Sell My Personal Information

2014 Cross Country Information

Started by AT, July 26, 2014, 12:31:52 pm

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

AT

July 26, 2014, 12:31:52 pm Last Edit: July 26, 2014, 12:33:46 pm by Almatrackster
Here is the Cross Country page link on the AAA website:
http://www.ahsaa.org/activity/11/track/xcountry

Hyperlinks on that above page that may be of interest:

1. "Declared Schools List" - Tells you which schools will be running in the upcoming season, boys and girls. Classifications are the same as other sports except 1A and 2A are combined at the state meet.

2. "Meet List - XC 2014" - List of meets that have registered to the AAA so far. Not very many meets right now, but more will register as we get closer to the start of the season.

Information about Cross Country
The state meet will be held on November 8th at Oaklawn in Hot Springs (Yes humans run at Oaklawn sometimes). Every athlete from every classification will run on the same day. They don't have the order of events up right now but it will be something like this:

1st race - 7A Boys
2nd race - 7A Girls
3rd race - 6A Boys
4th race - 6A Girls

So on and so forth.

So how do you follow cross country? Well, unfortunately, XC doesn't have a site where every school is required to submit their results. Some meets will post on directathletics, but many won't. The regular season is just like the track and field regular season. Teams win meets just for pride, conditioning, and the competitive atmosphere. Winning a meet doesn't help you or give you an advantage in the post season.

The "post season" is a little different in cross country than it is track and field. A school's respective conference cross country meet has no bearing on the state meet. An athlete doesn't have to run a certain time or finish a certain place to qualify for the state meet. If you are a declared school, you automatically get to go to the state meet and bring your best guys with you.

Now how are these cross country meets scored? How do you win one?

Well it's pretty simple, really. It's like golf in the fact that you want the lowest score. Let's say Alma and Vilonia have a cross country meet by themselves and this is how their top 5 finishes:

1. Alma athlete
2. Vilonia athlete
3. Alma athlete
4. Vilonia athlete
5. Alma athlete
6. Vilonia athlete
7. Vilonia athlete
8. Vilonia athlete
9. Alma athlete
10. Alma athlete

Since Alma's top 5 runners finished 1st, 3rd, 5th, 9th, and 10th...Alma would receive 1+3+5+9+10= 28 points
Similarly, Vilonia would receive 2+4+6+7+8= 27 points.

So even though Alma's runner won, it doesn't mean Alma wins the meet. Vilonia received less points because their top 5 runners finished, on average, higher and they would win the meet.

Tiebreakers are a bit more complicated and obviously the math becomes harder to keep up with when you have 30 teams instead of 2, but it's still the same concept.


Fox 16 Arkansas Fox 24 Arkansas