Who's in
first?
by Don Kardong
Don Kardong, a '76 Olympic marathoner, is president of the Road Runners Club of America and a senior writer for Runner's World. Opinions printed in the Daily Opinion section are the responsibility of the named authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Runner's World Online or Runner's World Magazine.
We're on the brink of another season of cross-country, which I'm told is a team sport. But if cross-country racing is a contest among groups rather than just a display of individual talent, why is it so hard, during and after each meet, to get information on team scores?
Last year my oldest daughter, then a high school freshman, decided to go out for cross-country. It was a wonderful process that included improved fitness, learning to deal with fears, and development of bonds with teammates. She finished the season solidly in love with the sport.
Watching her reactions, I became convinced that cross-country involves more powerful team dynamics than most other sports, even those in which team competition is more obvious. When a good cross-country team competes, each runner is connected, athletically and emotionally, with his or her teammates. Subtle gestures and glances, words of encouragement, and occasional shouts of excitement let everyone know: we're in this race together. Good cross-country programs work hard at developing a sense of team purpose.
And yet during virtually every cross-country race I watched last year, no one knew the score, or even an estimate of the score, at any time during the race. Afterwards, people seemed willing to sit around until dark waiting for a hint of which team actually won. It was more like a lottery vigil than a contest in which numbers are earned.
So here's my suggestion for increasing interest in the sport: let's start announcing team scores midrace, and let's broadcast a final score--at least an unofficial one--as soon as the final scorer crosses the line. Isn't that the way you develop team interest--among the runners, the spectators, the media?
How hard is this to do? Well, it'd be nice to have a hand-held calculator specially designed for the task. You'd punch in each runner's school, in order. You'd hit "calculate." You'd get your score. Life would be more complicated with more teams or more intricate scoring systems, but not much. Computers can process a gazillion calculations per second, so they ought to be able to outperform a couple of coaches with numbered tongue depressors.
Even without a specialized calculator, though, the process is usually simple enough. You write down each runner's school on a piece of paper as they pass. You add up the numbers. You tell people.
I did this for one matchup of two top local teams last year, and it made the race acutely dramatic. At 1 mile, School A had a 3-point lead. A half-mile later, a freshman from school B moved up a place. That brought the differential to 1 point, with the race outcome resting on the determination of any one runner. As it turned out, the freshman summoned a sprint on the homestretch, passed a runner from team A, and won the team competition for her school.
Was any of this--especially the heroics of the freshman runner--reported in the paper the next day? No, because sportswriters--the few interested enough to cover cross-country--never get this kind of information. What they get are final results. I'm not even sure the girl's teammates were fully aware of her contribution.
Long-time observers think they can instinctively sense which team is leading at any point in a race, and sometimes they can. But their instincts mean nothing to the uninitiated, which includes the vast majority of people attending any given meet.
I'll bet those people would love to hear team scoring updates every half-mile or so. Given the reality, though, most spectators this fall will simply stand on the sidelines cheering for friends and family members, then hightail it home. Most coaches will simply urge their runners to "Move up! Catch him!" without a precise sense of how important that might be. And most sportswriters will be handed lists of runners and times, with no indication of drama.
So it's back-to-school time, class. Those of us with an interest in this sport should sharpen our pencils and practice adding up columns of numbers. And when we attend our next meet, let's make sure everyone around knows that cross-country is indeed a team sport.
December 20, 1998, barry