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This may be new to some--it was to me: an invitational meet last weekend in Helena, MT, called the "7 of 7" meet. The idea is pretty interesting. The #1 runners of each team race in one race; the #2 runners all race together in a separate race; all the way down to 7th. In this way, no one can rely on teammates, and the fields are far more evenly matched than any normal dual or invitational meet. Plus, of course, those hard-working 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th guys get a chance to see what running at the front of the pack is all about. There were enough teams that each race (boys and girls) had no fewer than 30 competitors. Seemed like a very cool idea to me. Any other states have this?
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Re: Prep cross country
Hmmmm? Interesting concept... would like to see it in action and the results. I assume you add the finishing position of each teams runner in the seven (or five) races for a team score?
I can see the possibility of a little bottom loading to score low in the lower seeded races. -
Re: Prep cross country
Oh, yes, I should have mentioned that it was very much a team-scoring event. Bozeman won the boy's races with a score of 9 (yes, 9!), and the girls' races with 11. They've obviously got the best team in the state.
This really did strike me as a fascinating concept...Comment
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Re: Prep cross country
A similar event here in Cincinnati for many years, 1964-1983, that added times instead of places from separate races to get the winning team.
www.ehsports.com/results/FRRUDY-HISTORY.doc
Ohio outlawed the "non-standard" race format in 1983.Comment
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It is the way the team tennis and chess are played. Do they run them sequentially and wait for the finish of each section or do they set them off every 5 or 10 minutes?
Wisconsin has a very good runner Molly Seidel who runs for a tiny school. She ski races (downhill) in the winter and sails competitively in the summer. Thus, she cross trains a lot and might not be running more than 35 miles per week. In about her first race she ran 13:3x for 4000m and then ran 13:19 her last race (Wisconsin girls run 4000m). Who knows how she will stand up to more training, but she says that the added miles this year are one reason she is running faster. If she can run 80mpw by the end of college she should have no trouble doubling the distance she can run 3:20/km, and 20:00 is a pretty competitive 6000m time. I have no idea where she will run next year (who doesn't want her?).
A comment on lonewolf's post, made will I was writing mine (and watching the end of the StLouis/Philly game, which ended the same as the Brewer's game, so Milwaukee get home team advantage, and since they went something like 80-2 :lol: at home this year that is important). I think it is frowned on to invert the order and the times tell the tale. On the other hand, if they are saying run any guy in any race, then it becomes a strategy game.Comment
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Re: Prep cross country
I've read about those a number of times. I think that there is at least one in Minnesota, but I may be mistaken. It seems to be very early season, and a way to get an early race where kids are running against others of similar ability. Or so I believe.Comment
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My friends from Louisville Trinity, late 1970s, always that was a pretty cool meet.Originally posted by guruComment
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I've heard of this type of meet in Michigan. But of course Michigan has a variety of these type of meets. Most are grade races, in which the athletes only run against their own grade in a race (scoring varies but most you take the top runner in each race, so 4 is the ultimate score).
There is an interesting one called the fox and hounds. It's a race full of head starts. The 7th runners start off, then 10 seconds later the 6th, then another 10 seconds the 5th and so on until the #1's are 1:00 behind the 7th's. Makes for some interesting results.Comment
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Re: Prep cross country
Originally posted by DrJay
It's a classic course, still used to this day for both the Fr Rudy Invite, as well as the league meet of the local catholic schools. My two years were '83 and '84.Comment
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Ha! This just in. My Trinity HS friend who ran there in '78 and '79 has a daughter who posted on FB an hour ago, "[Cincinnati] Elder race today, hills of death await me...."Comment
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This race format brings back memories. When I went to college in Indiana in the mid 1960s one of my teammates spoke or running such a race. I thought it was a great idea. Since then I have coached cross country almost every year ( I missed two seasons between 1968 and 1971). Whenever I explained the format no one was interested. It sounds like a great idea.
To change the subject I did run in a race that was part of a low key xc meet. It was held at River Dell H.S. in Oradell, N.J. from the early 1970s through the 1980s. It was inaugurated by Dr. Robert Stevenson, the coach. He called it The Cumberland Run. As he explained every year to the participants, coaches, parents at the awards assembly, he began the run in his first year of coaching at the school. He had a weak team that was destroyed in every dual meet in the very strong league that he was in. He would look at the results and emphasize with the other weak teams in the region who were in other leagues. At the conclusion of the season he invited the seven weakest teams that he could find, perhaps it was more. It was called the Cumberland Run because little Cumberland College was defeated in football by Kentucky by an astronomical score. The following year the college dropped the sport. As Dr. Stevenson explained that though matter how bad your year was, it was better than Cumberland College's horrific year. He also gave out 30 medals. But after awarding the 30th medal he called up the 31st finisher and gave him a medal. He explained that when he was in high school he would return home after a meet and his mother would ask, how did you do? He would answer I almost won a medal. If I had passed one more.... So, he didn't want a kid to go home and say the same thing. After a few years his team and the others improved significantly, but he kept the meet going and kept it low key. He also had an alumni/coaches/parents race. J.V. kids could also run. It was a prediction race. Everyone filled out a card with their predicted time. No one could carry a watch, and there was an honor system about being informed of one's progress. Medals were awarded to how close one came to their predicted time. One time I was one second off my prediction. I ended up in 2nd place as one other runner was right on the money. One year a parent ran with his dog. The dog was registered and had a competitors number and was awarded a medal. Though the meet ended up with some very good teams, it remained quite different from any other meet. Also the girls ran with the boys. River Dell ended up a powerful team for many decades. Unfortunately, because a change in the scholastic schedule, the meet ended about a dozen years ago.
Kids run basically the same format all of the time. It's a wonderful breath of fresh air to do something different.Comment
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We had one of those in Illinois back in the '70's. A lot of fun.Comment
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Very interesting. Same core concept as the "7 of 7" but instead of 7 individual races, one giant handicap event.Originally posted by Jnathletics
On my original post above, I wonder how long it took to run a total of 14 full-length x-c races. There's no evidence that they were run in overlapping waves. And, given the logistics of it all, there had to be 25 or 30 minutes between each start...Comment
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Re: Prep cross country
I think the Cincinnati Elder HS meet guru referenced ran the 7th and 6th guys in one race, the 5th and 4th together, 3rd and 2nd, then a separate race for the #1 athletes. So four races total.Originally posted by kuhaComment
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Thanks--I hadn't quite realized that. A sensible way to do it, for sure. As I stated above, it seems pretty clear that the Montana event was made up of 14 (7 boys, 7 girls) separate races!Originally posted by DrJayComment
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