Points
By Daily Bruin Staff
Oct. 20, 1996 9:00 p.m.
Monday, October 21, 1996
A guide to everything you wanted to know about scoring but were
afraid to askBy Mark J. Dittmer
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Points? Cross country teams score points? How do they do
that?
Worry not: These vexing questions will now be answered. Here is
how scoring in cross country works.
Each team runs seven runners at a race, although some races
allow more entries. For example, on Saturday the UCLA women ran
Christina Bowen, Jessica Corbin, Melinda George, Githa Hampson,
Katerina Kechris, Bethany Lucas, and Kim Mortensen.
At the end of the race, a team’s seven runners have finished
anywhere from first to last. In this race UCLA’s happened to finish
as follows:
Kim Mortensen: Second.
Githa Hampson: 46th.
Katherina Kechris: 67th.
Jessica Corbin: 81st.
Christina Bowen: 104th.
Melinda George: 131st.
Bethany Lucas: 206th.
Those placings exclude runners who run unattached  that
means that their team did not come with them. For instance, on
Saturday, USC’s Emibet Shiferaw raced and finished fourth overall;
if you include her in the placings, Githa Hampson actually finished
47th. But Shiferaw did not run with a team so she does not count in
the scoring, and if you think about this too much you will get all
confused.
So to compile a team’s score, you take the finishes of its top
five runners and add them up. UCLA’s score Saturday was 2 + 46 + 67
+ 81 + 104 = 300. 300 points, exactly!
If you are understanding all of this, than you will no doubt
have already figured out that cross country is like golf, and that
the lower score is the better. Hence Villanova won with 65 points,
and New Mexico State lost with 934 points.
It is not like bowling. If it was, then UCLA would have won.
If you still do not understand, please e-mail the writer, Mark
Dittmer, at [email protected]. He promises not to make
fun of you.
