Team scoring question

[MUalum]

Originally Posted by JRCFP

You just cited all those excellent reasons why, historically, 8 runners are on a team. Congrats!

What you and your "following CC for 35 years" fail to account for is the way it actually worked: numbers 6 & 7 & 8 were ALL "pushers"!

Yes, of course, the current system uses only 7 -- but it didn't use to work that way.

Citing the current system is hardly evidence for how it formerly worked -- but thanks for carefully pasting those links in there.

You say you went back to results from the 70s and 80s -- Wow, that's cool, what meet results were you looking at? Do they really show the number of runners on each team & who was a "pusher" and who was not? Cuz back then, of course, the whole computerization aspect was non-existent -- so it's not like looking at results now, where they are all easily, nicely broken out by team.

Also, I'm curious -- where did you get the results? [just recently, someone sent me some partial results for a local marathon from the mid-80s -- it's a hard-to-read, scanned version of a bad copy -- and all it shows is name & time, with no "interim" splits like they do now, and none of the other info as now appears in results].

Not sure what the harshness is for in your post. I for one enjoy discussing issues with track and cross country and enjoy a good debate, but can do without the insults or put downs. With that said, I am very confident that scoring 8 runners was never the traditional way. You feel confident it is, but have given no facts, no links, and no basis for your opinion. You said it wouldn‘t make sense to have 8 runners compete if they didn't count in the scoring; I gave you many examples of why it would make sense, even if they don’t count in the scoring. The meet results that I looked at were from some of my own meets, where I have kept results from all those years ago. I am able to count the runners on each team and see if they were factored into the scoring if they had 8 runners. I also ran in those meets and distinctly remember it being discussed by our coach how the 8th runner on the team wouldn‘t count in the scoring. Our team was pretty good and it was frequently talked about in our race strategy to get our 6th and 7th runners in front of other teams top five runners, knowing our 8th guy wouldn‘t be able to officially do so. We still took great pride if we got 8 in front of some teams top five, even if the score didn't reflect it. Some of our invites we could run with 8 people, some we couldn't. So far I have not been able to find one race result in college or high school where the 8th runner actually was able to displace other runners. Is it possible? Absolutely and I am sure someone can come up with a result that shows this. Is it common or has it ever been? No, in my opinion it hasn't been.

I welcome you to come up with some evidence that I am wrong on this. Believe me, I have been wrong before in my life and can readily admit it if I have been proven wrong. With all of that said, I did come up with evidence that the CURRENT rule is to only count 7 runners in the scoring and my original question was why the GMC deviates from the CURRENT rule. I never asked for a history lesson and as of now, neither of has been able to definitively prove how meets were scored in the past anyway.

[iRunAgain]

Someone should just ask Kearney since he has been around forever and part of that conference.

[MUalum]

Originally Posted by iRunAgain

Someone should just ask Kearney since he has been around forever and part of that conference.

Good idea. I know several coaches post on here, but I am not sure if any GMC coaches do and I am sure Coach Kearney does not. I would respect what coach Kearney has to say since he is about as knowledgeable as anyone in regards to cross country and track. I am guessing this was discussed at a GMC coaches meeting and it was decided to count the 8th runners in the official scoring. My whole reason for the post was just to see what the reasoning was, since it isn’t what the current rules indicate.

Even though I am more interested in today’s scoring rules, I did take some time and look through the season results booklet that my high school coach had put together. This was back in the 70’s. At conference, regionals, sectionals, state and all the dual or triangular meets we were only allowed to run seven on varsity. In most of the bigger invitational’s we were allowed to run 8 runners. Out of 11 meets that year, four of them allowed 8 runners and the rest only 7, so it certainly wasn’t common back then to run more than 7 runners, but it definitely did happen. I still can’t find a situation where those #8 runners counted in the scoring, but I would be interested to see if someone can find some results that do.

[Drive]

boom

Originally Posted by Zen Miler

D1 college coach for 25 of them, former state record holder at 1600m in Wisconsin.

[JRCFP]

I never got a chance to speak with Coach Kearney over the weekend, but DID talk with Hall-of-Fame Coach Rymer RE the 7? 8? topic.

According to him, when he started coaching it was init. 7 runners. Then, for quite a while, during most of his coaching tenure, it was 8 runners -- until Regionals/Sectionals/State (yes, there were indeed Regionals back then). And, the whole time when it was 8, all 8 actually had an impact on the scoring. As he put it (rather indignantly): "Of course all 8 counted. It wouldn't make sense for a guy to run if he didn't count."

Thus, Runners # 6-7-8 ALL served as "Pushers" -- and, thus, in Dual Meets (which Everyone did back then, unlike now, when only the Big8 still runs Dual meets), the "Perfect Score" (which Coach Rymer's teams often "chased" & accomplished) was 15-55. For those scoring at home, that means his Falls North guys would go 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 = 15 pts., leaving the other team @ 9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16 = 55 pts. Scoring simply 7 means that the Perfect Score would be 15-50.

Also, there may have been a difference between how WISAA & WIAA did things -- WISAA schools often had smaller enrollments, and thus often wanted to "skinny down" the number of runners "involved" in the scoring, etc., so as to soften the impact of the disparity between "Big" schools and "Smaller" schools. For the same reason, way back when, in the H.S. football world, smaller schools played 7-man football, because they simply didn't have enough boys in the school to play the "full" number.

Finally, RE your request for "Links" to prove it, well, obviously there are no links to access, since Al Gore hadn't yet invented the Internet.

However, you yourself provided the proof RE how it was done, via the Bylaws for the GMC, and I know that the Bylaws for the Classic8 also cite 8 runners. The coaches to whom I talked about this believe that when people started using computerized scoring, the programs had been originally written to handle just the 7-runner scoring used @ Sect-State, and then that slid over to other meets because the programs could not be customized by meet management -- they came in only "one flavor", and everyone had to accept that flavor if they wanted to make use of the new, high-tech system which replaced the "tongue-depressor system" (explain THAT to today's high schoolers!).

[MUalum]

Thanks JRCFP for the additonal information. I appreciate it and certainly respect what Coach Rymer has to say. It would be nice to know the years he was talking about when they did 7 and then later went to 8. My experience with high school was the late 70's and we usually were only able to run 7 runners in most of the meets, with 8 in a few invites. In the 80's and later my experience was collegiately and we were never able to count the 8th runners or above as pushers, in those meets where we could run more than 7.

Whether those 8th runners should currently count as pushers or not is strictly a matter of opinion and I can certainly see your point, but I still think it makes sense to keep the scoring the same as the championship meets, which has always been 7, even according to coach Rymer. I can't think of any other sport where the scoring is different for regular season games and then changed during the championship season.

[MUalum]

By the way, I posted this question on the letsrun.com board just to get some national perspective and because letsrun always has honest answers, lol. There were mixed responses, sort of like on here. Some remember it like I do that #8 runners never acted as pushers and at least one other remembers it like JRCFP and Coach Rymer remember it, with the 8th acting as pushers. My main reason for the initial post was to find out why a conference would do it differently than the current rules state, but learning the history of our sport is always interesting to me.

My guess for some of the differences has to do with what decade we are talking about, what region of the country or state, college or high school, etc. Personally I learned something from this thread. Here is a link to the letsrun.com thread.

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_re...thread=4283547