HS XC Tiebreaker

Luckily, I've never seen two teams with only 5 runners tie, but it must have happened. You're right, that rule if both teams have 5 completely contradicts the standard 6th place tiebreaker. I don't know why the rule wouldn't have the standard tiebreaker move up to the first 5th funner.

9-2-5 is for those especially rare cases where both teams have only five runners finish. As in, only ten people cross the finish line. It doesn't contradict 9-2-4 at all.

Yes it does. If it were in line with 9-2-4, the team with the faster 5th runner would win.

Kele wrote:

Yes it does. If it were in line with 9-2-4, the team with the faster 5th runner would win.

Wrong. Each rule is as inclusive as possible in breaking the tie. One adds another runner into the team to determine the winner. This includes a sixth person and is therefore more inclusive. Adding up four people when the score is tied when each team has only five finish is the next most inclusive way to score. Only taking the fifth would be the most exclusive way to do it. 6>5>4>1. It is consistent with the previous rule.

The way I was looking at it is that the sixth man rule seems to favor having more depth in determining the winner. So, a five person team with a faster fifth man would have more depth than the other five person team.

We must not be talking about dual meets, because that rule isn't even necessary for dual meets.

Think about it...how can you have a tie in 5 vs 5 dual?

1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10= 55

The closest you can get to a tie is 27-28.

It's for inviational/competition use only. In this case, it does make sense to make the scoring for the tie breaker as inclusive as possible.

Someone brought up depth. Depth isn't what wins meets, a better overall team does- whether they are better upfront or better in their 5th man. The better overall team wins.

So, as stated before, the tiebreaker rules try to use as many people on the team as possible when determining the winner.

When a sixth person is available, the team with better 6 total runners wins. When there's not a sixth, they resort to seeing who had the better top four, since this is the most people they can use to compare. That's what he meant by being as inclusive as posible.

arghmeowbnag wrote:

Kele wrote:

Yes it does. If it were in line with 9-2-4, the team with the faster 5th runner would win.

Wrong. Each rule is as inclusive as possible in breaking the tie. One adds another runner into the team to determine the winner. This includes a sixth person and is therefore more inclusive. Adding up four people when the score is tied when each team has only five finish is the next most inclusive way to score. Only taking the fifth would be the most exclusive way to do it. 6>5>4>1. It is consistent with the previous rule.

Good explanation. That makes sense, but I hadn't looked at it from that perspective. When you normally think about it coming down to the sixth runner, it is easy to focus on the race being decided by that one runner instead of basically rescoring all six runners.

arghmeowbnag,

Thanks for the explanation. I understand the reasoning now. I had the impression ties were broken by comparing head to head 6th place finishers and thus thought ties were broken with faster 5th place finishers in 5 person team ties.

I checked the NCAA rule and it doesn't even consider 6th person finish. It compares head to head finishes of the top 5 from tied teams and advances the team which wins 3 of the top 5 head to head matchups.