RaceDay Scoring: Cross Country Event

Webinar Overview

This Timer Tip Tuesday webinar focuses on best practices for using RaceDay Scoring for cross country events. The session emphasizes that cross country scoring can be complex, so getting the setup order right is critical. It covers recent RaceDay Scoring updates, race and team setup, scoring rules, reporting, participant imports, external results providers, and a race-week checklist.

The overall message is simple: build the event correctly from the beginning, test it before race day, and avoid unnecessary complexity.

The Most Important Best Practice: Follow the Setup Order

The webinar identifies the order of operations as one of the most important things to understand when setting up a cross country race. Doing things out of order can result in reports needing to be rebuilt or configurations needing to be repeated.

The recommended order is:

1. Create or import the race.
2. Create the scored events.
3. Import participants and create/map any needed team types.
4. Set up team scoring.
5. Adjust scoring by team type if different divisions require different rules.
6. Build and customize reports last.

Reports should come last because changes to team-scoring configurations—such as scoring depth or tiebreaker rules—can require reports to be rebuilt. Default reports will rebuild automatically, but custom reports or customizations may need to be recreated manually.

Creating Races and Scored Events

If a race already exists on RunSignup, it can be imported into RaceDay Scoring. If it doesn’t, it can be created locally. Even when registration isn’t being handled through RunSignup, creating a RunSignup race can provide access to features such as publishing results and cloud backups through the Timer Dashboard.

A key recommendation is to create a registration event for each race with its own start time, while keeping the number of scored events as low as practical.

For example, if boys and girls run together at the same time, they may be handled in one scored event and separated later in reporting. Fewer scored events mean less repeated team-scoring configuration. Once a good setup is established, renewing it year over year also makes future meets easier to manage.

Team Types: Keep Them as Simple as Possible

For most cross country events, only one team type is needed. The webinar describes the typical setup as scoring through five runners and displacing through seven.

Separate team types become useful when scoring rules genuinely differ—for example:

• Small-school versus large-school divisions.
• Different competitive divisions.
• Open versus Masters competition, where one group might score three/displace five while another scores five/displaces seven.

The webinar cautions against creating unnecessary team types for JV versus Varsity or boys versus girls. Doing so can require separate versions of the same school team and more participant management. Boys and girls are generally better handled through scored events or reporting rather than separate team types.

Cross Country Team Scoring

For a standard cross country setup, the team scoring type should be Aggregate, meaning each athlete completes the full course and individual performances combine into the team score.

Most importantly, Use Cross Country Scoring should be enabled. This bases team scoring on finishing places and applies cross country displacement rules. The webinar identifies displacement as a major distinction between true cross country scoring and other aggregate team competitions.

The standard defaults are generally:

Score through 5 → Displace through 7

Most races won’t need to change these settings. Also, team points only calculate for athletes who are actually associated with a team, so team assignments should be checked if expected scores aren’t appearing.

Scored Event vs. Team Type Scoring Rules

RaceDay Scoring allows scoring depth to be configured at either the scored-event level or team-type level.

For the typical race with one team type, scored-event-level configuration is sufficient. Team-type configuration is useful when different groups within the same scored event follow different scoring rules—for example, Masters scoring three/five and Open scoring five/seven.

The recommendation is essentially: if you only have one team type and don’t have a specific reason to change this setting, leave it at the scored-event level.

Choose the Correct Tiebreaker

Timers also need to select the correct tiebreaker rule for the type of competition.

The webinar specifically notes:

• NFHS should be used for high school competition.
• NCAA has its own head-to-head tiebreaker method for collegiate meets.

Using the wrong tiebreaker can produce incorrect team standings, so timers should verify the governing rules for the particular meet rather than assuming all cross country events work the same way.

Mixed-Gender Scored Events

RaceDay Scoring can automatically create separate report sections by gender when multiple genders compete within the same scored event.

For example, if boys and girls both race at 6:00 PM, they can share one scored event while reports automatically create separate gender sections. This reduces the number of scored events and eliminates the need to manually build gender-filtered reports.

However, this setting should not be enabled if boys and girls already have separate scored events. Otherwise, RaceDay Scoring will attempt to split an already gender-specific event again, creating confusing report sections.

The Q&A also confirms that the gender-splitting functionality supports non-binary sections, allowing reports to be broken into three sections when appropriate.

Advanced Scoring Options

Several specialized settings are available but should generally be left alone unless the meet specifically requires them.

Tier 2 Scoring supports situations where Varsity and JV compete together and athletes are assigned into those sections based on finishing position.

Qualifier Depth is designed for championship advancement scenarios—for example, advancing the top three teams plus the top ten individuals who are not already members of qualifying teams.

Ghost runners can be used when meet rules explicitly allow incomplete teams to receive a score by inserting virtual runners at the back of the field.

The broader recommendation is: don’t enable unfamiliar scoring settings simply because they’re available.

Reporting and Publishing to RunSignup

RaceDay Scoring automatically builds Team Finisher List reports for scored events. Those reports can publish results to RunSignup.

An important benefit is that RunSignup then automatically generates a Team Standings display from the underlying results data. Timers do not need to manually build a separate team-standings report simply to publish standings online.

By default, the report includes every team type associated with the scored event. If a race has multiple team types, timers should verify which ones belong in each report before configuring autosaves.

RunSignup can then present individual results and team standings together, allowing users to view overall team rankings and drill into the individual performances contributing to a team’s result.

Unattached Runners

Some meets—particularly collegiate or open competitions—allow unattached participants, such as alumni.

RaceDay Scoring reports can be configured to display these runners. By default, unattached runners do not displace athletes competing on official teams, so their presence does not alter the team scoring. If a meet requires them to displace other runners, the webinar suggests that one possible approach is creating an “Unattached” team for them.

Custom Reports

Although RunSignup automatically generates the online team standings, timers may still want additional RaceDay Scoring reports for race-day operations.

Available options include:

• Team Rosters — useful for coach packets and confirming bib/chip assignments.
• Team Detail — ranks teams and displays the individual team members contributing to the results.
• Team Summary — a more compact team-ranking report.
• Multi-section reports — such as a team summary followed by detailed results or top finishers.

For coach packets, the webinar recommends enabling page breaks after sections in Print Preview. This allows each team’s roster to print on its own page rather than having teams split unpredictably across pages.

A Common Error: Missing Team Types

One common support issue is an error indicating that RaceDay Scoring is unable to build a report because team types are missing.

This generally means a cross country report exists, but no team type is associated with it. The fix is to edit the affected report and make sure the appropriate team type—or all applicable team types—is mapped to it.

This reinforces the webinar’s earlier point about setup order: import/create team types before completing team scoring and reports.

Importing Athletes and Teams

Cross country participant data often arrives from spreadsheets generated by different registration or meet-management systems, so clean importing is particularly important.

RaceDay Scoring allows teams and athletes to be imported together. There is no need to create one team spreadsheet and another participant spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet should ideally contain:

• The athlete’s event.
• Exact team name.
• Team type, when applicable.
• Other required participant information.

If a team type doesn’t already exist, one can be created during the participant import process.

Timers should carefully review every field mapping before completing the import. RaceDay Scoring attempts to automatically match spreadsheet columns, but external systems may use unexpected column names, potentially leading to incorrect mappings.

Use Registration IDs for Easier Updates

When importing participants from another provider, mapping an external registration ID can make future roster updates significantly easier.

With a consistent ID, RaceDay Scoring can recognize an existing athlete and process later imports as updates rather than duplicates. For example, if a coach moves an athlete from JV to Varsity, a later import can update that athlete’s event association rather than creating another participant record.

External Results Providers

The webinar covers several external cross country results platforms, including Athletic.net, AthleticLIVE, MileSplit, and TFRRS.

For Athletic.net, a compatible results file can be exported from a Team Finisher List report and manually uploaded. Team scoring must already be configured.

AthleticLIVE uses a separate workflow involving an autosave file and Athletic’s middleware/application to automatically send results. Because the integration was still relatively new, the webinar recommends testing it at a lower-stakes meet before relying on it for an important event.

External platforms can also require athlete IDs and team IDs. These should be mapped correctly during the initial participant import because adding them after the fact can be difficult.

Race Week Checklist

The webinar closes with a practical checklist that timers should complete before every cross country meet:

• Confirm scored-event start times.
• Verify team types.
• Confirm team-scoring rules and scoring depth.
• Verify gender-report splitting when applicable.
• Confirm athletes are associated with the correct teams.
• Preview reports and confirm team scores populate correctly.
• Make sure Team Finisher List reports have team types selected.
• Enable unattached runners if the meet permits them.
• Verify required IDs for external results providers.
• Finish Team Summary, Team Detail, roster, and other custom reports.
• Configure report autosaves.
• Run a test race and confirm reports and team scores look correct.
• Print team rosters with page breaks when coach packets are needed.

The webinar strongly recommends doing this work before race day and reaching out for support in advance when a setup is unusual or unclear.

Key Takeaways

The most important lesson from the webinar is that successful cross country scoring depends heavily on preparation and setup order. RaceDay Scoring can handle standard meets as well as more complex scenarios, but timers should resist adding unnecessary complexity.

For most events, the strongest approach is:

Race → Scored Events → Participants & Team Types → Team Scoring → Reports → Autosaves → Test

Keep team types simple, use the correct cross country and tiebreaker rules, carefully map participant data, build custom reports only after scoring is finalized, and test the complete workflow before race day.

The session also highlights how RaceDay Scoring can simplify the timer’s workflow beyond calculating scores: RunSignup can automatically generate team standings, participant IDs can streamline roster updates, external-provider integrations reduce duplicate work, and well-designed reports can support coaches and race officials.

Bottom line: A well-prepared RaceDay Scoring setup turns a complicated cross country meet into a repeatable process—and once that setup is right, renewing and reusing it can make future seasons substantially easier.