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Paul Scott comment: "I love cross country competition. Here's why"

Posted: Thu, Oct 22, 2020 3:17 PM

(The following is a comment by decorahnews.com's Paul Scott):

I love cross country.

You have probably already heard sports fans talk about the positive lessons that sports teach.  They make good points.

But it's also true that in many sports, only a few people get to compete.  You can be a good quarterback, for instance, but if your team has a great quarterback, chances are you'll be sitting on the bench.  Baseball, softball, basketball, wrestling--these are some of the sports where playing time is finite and at the discretion of the head coach.

By contrast, when the starting gun fires at a cross country meet, everyone gets a chance to run.  And the fastest runners are the ones selected for the varsity squad.  If you don't like the choices, well, it's your job to find a way to run faster.

But the democratic nature of cross country doesn't stop there.  The scoring of a cross country meet finds a unique way to break any tie scores. 

At a meet, the finish places of a team's top five runners are added together to give a score.  If two teams wind up with the same number--or even three teams, as happened Wednesday in Decorah's State Qualifier Meet in Waverly-the tie is broken by taking the sixth fastest runner among the tied teams.

In Wednesday's case, it was Decorah's Kryia Atwell who helped her team finish first by finishing 30th as an individual, with a time of 21:22.77.

So congratulations to Kryia--and congratulations to cross country meets, where even the 6th place finisher is an important part of the team.