What do people think about a cross country team switching jerseys to non school colors in their box 1 minute before the start of the race in order to prevent themselves from being tracked by a class rival. I feel this is a cheap attempt at winning and shows no resolve.
I've never seen an XC team wearing jerseys at all.
Kind of smart, but it doesn't seem all that hard for the rival school to glance over and say, "Oh, ok, they're in red now instead of blue."
It's not against any rules, but is obviously a strange and questionable tactic.
Why do you need to track another team? Just complete the race as fast as you can. Tactics only matter for the frontrunners. But even there, it's only the difference between one and a few points. The difference between winning and coming in second is only 1 point.
i really thought this thread might be about an interesting problem regarding skin color.
[quote]Philosphizer wrote:
What do people think about a cross country team switching jerseys to non school colors in their box 1 minute before the start of the race in order to prevent themselves from being tracked by a class rival. I feel this is a cheap attempt at winning and shows no resolve.[/quote
If the uniform colors beat you then you might be a pu$$y.
I swear I remember hearing a story about an Ohio HS team doing so at the state meet in the mid to late 70's.
I have seen it in a race with a semi-rival team doing it (typically red, changed to black right before the gun). Our team realized it about 400m into the race.
I can only really speak for myself, but the only thing I did differently was scoff. The other team had a better race than anyone expected, one guy in particular, and sneaked into nationals.
The general consensus was the it was a hilariously pointless, but at the same time they DID make nationals.
This was a DIII regional race.
Separate story:
I went to Buffalo last year to watch the DI NE regional. I don't know if they had changed on the line or had them on the whole time, but Columbia had black uniforms instead of their typical fairy blue. Again, I can't speak for anyone else, but as a spectator it took me more than half the race to realize this and I simply found it to be annoying. Good thing I wasn't a parent, I would not have been happy with the coach if I couldn't spot my kid for most of the race.
Quaker Oh!s wrote:
Good thing I wasn't a parent, I would not have been happy with the coach if I couldn't spot my kid for most of the race.
If you can't recognize your kid after 20 years, then you should be upset with yourself.
There is so much wrong with this scenario: the tracking (news flash, results will be posted following the race); the attempts to thwart tracking (hmm... there's a risk we'll lose to them in a running race, especially if they "track" us. If only we could throw a wrench in their tracking plans); the thinking too much about things only peripherally related to running faster.
Just f'n run already.