HS Tie Breaker MUST change - team loses because no 6th runner

what if they ran 7 and had 2 get injured mid race? They lost because they had 2 injuries? That's an idiotic rule.

If you want to make the 6th and 7th runner matter, then you should be arguing team scores should be based on adding the point totals for the top 7 and not the top 5. But nobody would make that argument because it's dumb.

The winner should be determined only by looking at the top 5. 6th and 7th runners can have a big role by displacing other runners but beyond that they do not matter and should not be looked at for a tie breaker.

I think scoring the top 5 as a dual meet is the most fair option.

What if the dual comes out as a tie?

Just because you don't like the rule, it doesn't mean that the rule is bad or should be changed. There are plenty of people that agree if the score is tied after 5 runners that you should just look at the next runner. Seems like the perfect way to do it to me.

Here in the Great White North, we use the World Athletics rule. Last week, we were tied at 47, but won our Conference on a tie break. In 1998, we were in a three-way tie for the win, but placed second on tie break.

The rule is what it is. No one can convince me that 6th runner or head-to-head is better than the WA rule. They are all legit ways to resolve a situation. It's just how the game is played - deal with it.

The original "tie" has a bunch of runners from other teams displacing the runners and greatly affecting the score, making it more of a random score. Head to head eliminates those other teams.

However, a case could be made that the purpose of the meet is to see who runs best against all of the teams at the meet, not head to head. But that still doesn't solve the original problem of a small school not able to field a sixth runner.

Total time is a better tiebreaker. If we can't decide the winner based on placing, it is pedantic to go back into the minutia of placing to try and refigure it differently. If a team has a superstar, no matter how fast they go they can only score one point and that is their only contribution to the team. Total time puts more emphasis every single runner in the top five, instead of having the tiebreaker determined mostly by the 4th, 5th, or 6th runners.

No they aren't. A 10 person football team can win if those 10 play better than the other 11. The losing team here could have won if their 5 scored higher. They didn't.

They knew the rules going in and consciously decided, in advance, that they would forfeit in the case of a tie.They gambled and lost. Time to find a 6th.

The old NCAA rule was my favorite: A tie is a tie, except when breaking a tie to decide which team advanced from the Regional meet to Nationals (in which case the current NCAA tiebreaker was employed). Two teams that scored the same at Nationals were both national champions.

Two or more teams that have the same lowest score are equally good. Both are winners and should be recognized as such. I simply don't see the "need" to break a tie.

That said, if ties are going to be broken then I do favor the NCAA's tiebreaker. A team's sixth runner has already had the opportunity to a) finish in his/her team's top five, and b) add points to other teams' scores. Why should the sixth finisher--a lesser runner on the day--get yet another bite of the apple? Really doesn't make sense to me.

I am fine with both the HS and college rules. The rationale for the college rule is you break a tie with the 5 athletes who tied

So I had to look it up. What a great race. Notre Dame was ahead at the mile, Montrose was ahead at the two mile, then tied at the finish.

Montrose had a faster total time, so they are the winners in my book. But wait, the scoresheet also calculated head to head matchups between every school in the meet. Notre Dame had the most head to head wins, Montrose was actually third in head to head wins.

So many ways to calculate who was the best team, but since the sixth runner has been the tiebreaker forever, and we all know that, you have to concede the trophy to Notre Dame. But you can also always say that the Montrose iron five ran like champions that day.

Except in some cases, the sixth or seventh runner were a factor in the original tie.

Nobody trying to say Montrose is the true winner. The argument is that there is a better way to break ties.

Using a 6th runner to break a tie is like breaking a team score tie in track by seeing which team had the most runners 1 spot away from scoring. It's foolish.

Montrose did not learn that their 6th man was the difference because the 6th man never existed.

The 6th had an opportunity to be in the top 5, or to push an opponent on a team down a place. They couldn't do it. It makes WAY MORE SENSE to break a tie by looking at the #1 runners instead of the #6 runners. But both of those are inferior to World Athletics or NCAA rules.

Top 5 already had a bite of the apple. Why give them another?They could have just run better if they wanted to affect the outcome so it makes no sense to count them again.

All schemes suck in different ways. Teams know the rules going in and have to live with them.

I think you all are missing the point that some high school teams only have 5 runners.

Too bad for them.

And? Whose fault is that?

And some may have only 4 runners.

6 and 7 already are scoring in the sense that they can displace other runners. Being “scoring five” alludes to the fact that five score under normal circumstances. They don’t call it the “tie-breaking five.”