Cross Country Scoring

How 2Timer scores cross country teams: scorers and displacers, who counts, ties, ghost runners, and how teams tied on score are separated. These rules apply when the meet’s sport is cross country.

Where to set scorers, displacers, ghost runners, and the tie-break

On a new meet: the new-meet wizard’s Rules step asks Number of scorers, Number of displacers, Ghost Runners Allowed, and Team tie-break. At the Basic level the wizard doesn’t ask: the meet starts on 5 scorers, 7 displacers, and no ghost runners.
On an existing meet: open Setup. The Scoring section has Scorers, Displacers, Ghost runners, and Team tie-break.

Scorers, displacers, and ghost runners apply to the whole meet. Only the tie-break can differ by division.

Scorers and displacers: what 5/7 means

Most meets score 5 runners and let 7 displace. In 2Timer, displacers include the scorers, so 5/7 means:

a team’s first 5 eligible runners add their points to the team score;
its first 7 eligible runners take a scoring position, pushing other teams’ runners back.

It is not “5 plus 2”. Example: Westfield’s runners finish 3rd, 8th, 12th, 15th, 20th, 24th, and 30th. Runners 1 to 5 are scorers. Runners 6 and 7 are displacers: they add nothing to Westfield’s score, but they push other teams’ runners back a place. Westfield’s 8th runner, if there is one, neither scores nor displaces.

Scorer and displacer limits

Scorers can be 2 to 12, and so can displacers.
Displacers can’t be fewer than scorers.
Ghost runners can be 0 to 2, and no more than one fewer than the number of scorers.

2Timer doesn’t quietly change a number you typed. If you enter more scorers than displacers, or more ghost runners than allowed, the change is refused with a message saying why, so a meet never scores under numbers you didn’t choose. Correct one of the numbers and save again.

Why a runner who placed isn’t counting in the team scores

A runner can place in the race and still not count toward team scoring. Example: Ava Chen from Lincoln Prep placed 4th, but her team score didn’t include her. A runner counts for their team only when all of these are true:

They finished with a place. Did Not Finish, Did Not Start, Disqualified, and Scratched runners don’t count.
They aren’t exhibition. Exhibition (non-scoring) on the athlete keeps them out.
Their team is scored. On Teams, the team’s Scored? toggle must be on. A team whose name or code contains “unattached” is created with Scored? off, and the phone list labels it Unattached.
Their team code matches a team in the meet. A code with no matching team, usually a typo, counts for nobody.
The result has an athlete. A finish recorded on a bib that no athlete has yet has no team until an athlete is given that bib.
Their team has enough runners. A team with fewer finishers than the number of scorers doesn’t score, unless ghost runners make up the difference.
They’re within their team’s displacers. In a 5/7 meet, a team’s 8th runner doesn’t score or displace.

A runner who doesn’t count keeps their individual place and time. They take no scoring position, so the runner behind them moves up a scoring position.

A team code that doesn’t match any team

If an athlete’s team code matches no team in the meet, usually because of a typo or an import that never created the team, they can’t score for anybody. They keep their own place and time but take no scoring position, so no other team’s score changes because of them.

2Timer lists this as a data issue on the meet dashboard, naming the athletes and relays that carry the code. Create the team, or fix the code on those athletes, and the issue clears. If the runner really is a one-off with no team, you can dismiss it. Fix these before the race if you can; they are easy to miss until team scores come out.

Boys and girls in the same race: one team score or two?

Each group a report is split by is scored as its own race. When boys and girls run together, the team scores depend on how the report or export is split:

Split by gender: girls’ teams and boys’ teams are scored separately, each within their own gender’s places.
Not split by gender: the race has one team score across every runner.

The same applies to splitting by division, group, or league: each one is scored on its own, with places re-ranked within it. An older saved or built-in report that has no split choice splits a mixed cross country race by gender.

Runners who tie

When two runners are given the same place, they share one scoring position and split the points of the positions they cover.

Two runners tied across scoring positions 2 and 3 both show as position 2 and each contributes 2.5 to their team. The next runner is position 4. Three runners tied across positions 3, 4, and 5 each contribute 4.

So:

A team score can end in .5. A score of 28.5 is correct, not a rounding error.
Neither team gains from the order the tie was typed in. Splitting the points gives the same result either way. This is the NCAA and USATF rule.

Teams tied on score

Two teams can finish with the same score. 2Timer separates them using the Team tie-break setting. Pick the one your governing body uses:

High school (the default): compares the runner just after the last scorer (the 6th runner in a 5-scorer meet), then the next one, and so on through the displacers. A team with no runner at that position loses the comparison.
USATF: compares the last scoring runner first (the 5th in a 5-scorer meet), then works forward toward the first.
NCAA: compares the scorers head to head, 1st against 1st, 2nd against 2nd, and so on. The team that wins more of those comparisons places higher.

Changing this setting only reorders teams tied on score; it never changes a team’s score. Team standings say which tie-break decided the order.

If the tie-break still can’t separate two teams, they share the team place, and the next team’s place skips the shared one.

A division scored under a different rule book (college race in a high school meet)

A meet can hold races scored under different rules, such as a college race alongside high school races. Each division has its own Team tie-break on the division’s edit screen, under Team Scoring. It starts on Use meet setting. Choose a different tie-break, and only that division’s races use it; every other division keeps the meet’s rule, and each division’s standings name the tie-break they used.

You can see and change every division’s tie-break at once in the Team tie-break column on Divisions. The meet’s own Team tie-break on Setup names any division that isn’t following it.

Scorers, displacers, and ghost runners stay meet-wide; only the tie-break can differ by division.

Tie-break defaults in the new-meet wizard

When you add a College/University division in the wizard, it is created on the NCAA tie-break, because a college race is scored under NCAA rules even when the rest of the meet is high school. The Review step says so before the meet is created, and you can change it on the division afterwards.
The meet’s own tie-break is preselected from the genre. Championship, Masters, and Youth – USATF start on USATF, and every other cross country genre starts on High school. Change it on the Rules step before creating the meet, or on Setup afterwards.

Ghost runners: let a short team score (a 2Timer rule)

Ghost Runners Allowed lets a team that is a runner or two short still get a team score. It is a 2Timer and local-league convention, not NFHS, NCAA, or USATF scoring, so leave it at 0 for a rule-book meet.

Example: scorers are 5 and ghost runners allowed are 2. St. Mary’s brings only 4 girls. One ghost fills their 5th scoring spot, and St. Mary’s gets a team score.

How ghosts score:

A team gets a ghost only for a missing scorer, never for a missing displacer.
The team’s first ghost scores one place past the last real scoring position in the race, and its second ghost scores one place after that. If the last real scorer in the race took scoring position 40, a team’s ghosts score 41 and 42.
Ghosts don’t push anyone back. Two teams that each use one ghost both score 41 for it.
A ghost has no time, so a team with a ghost shows no average time or split (the gap from its first to its last scorer).
A team that is still short after its allowed ghosts doesn’t score.

Incomplete teams

By default, a team with fewer finishers than the number of scorers doesn’t get a team score. With Ghost Runners Allowed above 0, a team that is short by no more than that number gets a score, with each ghost scored after the last real scorer in the race.

Incomplete teams are listed after the scoring teams, without a team place. Reports show how many finishers they had and how many they needed, never a partial score.

Total team time, and ranking teams by time

Team standings can show Total time, the sum of the scorers’ times, beside the average. To add it, on a report’s Customize, open Team standings columns and pick Total time. A team with a ghost runner has no total, because a ghost has no time.

Rank teams by on the same Customize decides the order of the standings:

Points (the default): lowest score first, then the meet’s tie-break rule.
Team time: the lowest total team time first. Average time would give the same order, since every team counts the same number of scorers. Teams with the same total share a place, and no tie-break rule applies.

The column the teams were ranked by always prints, and the table says which it is:

Under Points, Score always prints and Total time is a column you can add.
Under Team time, the heading reads Team standings (ranked by team time), Total Time always prints first, and the scorer columns 1–5, (6), (7) show each runner’s time instead of their points. Score is still shown, but it is now a column you can take off: open Team standings columns and untick Score, so nobody reads the points as the ranking.

Under Team time, ghost runners don’t apply. Say Lincoln has four finishers in a five-scorer meet that allows a ghost: under Points, Lincoln scores with a ghost; under Team time, Lincoln has no score and is listed with the incomplete teams as 4 of 5.

Rank teams by changes only that report. The meet’s own team places, live results, scoreboards, and exports such as Hy-Tek stay ranked by points.

When results are timed to the whole second, many runners tie, and total team time is often the fairer comparison of two teams.

Compare divisions: the Combined Divisions report

At an invitational or league meet where each division ran its own race on the same course, a coach may ask how their team would have done a division up, for example before deciding whether to move up for Sections. The Combined Divisions report answers that: it ranks the runners of separately run races together by time and rescores the teams over that combined field.

Find Combined Divisions on Reports in a cross country meet. It is offered at the Standard level.
It makes one comparison for each distance with two or more races, girls and boys apart, so you can print it after the last race without choosing anything.
To answer one coach’s question, use Customize on a results report. Under Grouping, set Races to Combine races of the same distance, and choose the divisions to compare under Events. Races are combined only with races of the same distance. A short preview under the choice lists what will be compared, and any race with no other race at its distance, which prints on its own as an ordinary race with its own places.

What the report shows:

Each runner’s Combined place, their Race, and their Place in race, so any row can be checked against that race’s official results.
Runners with the same time share a combined place, even two from the same race who were placed 5th and 6th there. Runners who didn’t finish keep their status and come last.
Team standings scored over the combined field with the meet’s tie-break rule, with Total time. A team that ran in more than one of the races counts as one team, and its name lists the races.
The heading names each race and when it started.

Every page says Comparison only — not official results. These races were run separately. The report saves nothing and changes nothing: places, team scores, exports, live results, and scoreboards are exactly as before.

Ghost runners in reports

When ghost runners are used, team standings and the detailed cross country reports say so:

Ghost Runner appears as the runner’s name.
The team summary shows a ghost count.
A note explains that G means a ghost runner was scored.

Runners listed under each team

Any results report with team scores can list each team’s runners under the standings, the way many state meet results do. On Customize, under Team scores, tick List runners under each team. Each team gets a block:

The heading shows the team place, name, and both totals, the one the teams were ranked by first, for example 1. Lakeside 57 pts · 1:38:42.
Below it are the scorers, then the displacers in parentheses. Each line shows a number, the runner’s name and grade, and their time. The number is the points the runner earned when teams are ranked by Points, so the block adds up to the score, or the runner’s overall place when ranked by Team time.
A ghost runner appears as its own line with its points marked G.
Incomplete teams, when you include them, show how many scorers they have of how many they need.

The blocks print on the report page, when printed, and in plain text. Spreadsheet and data files (CSV, TSV, JSON, XML) leave them out, since every runner’s row there already has their team.

The XC Team Finisher List report on Reports is the same thing ready-made: the team standings and these blocks, without the individual results.

Recommended cross country scoring settings

For standard scholastic or college cross country:

5 scorers
7 displacers
0 ghost runners

Turn on ghost runners only when your meet’s rules let incomplete teams score that way.

Metadata

Last Updated: 2026-10-14
Document Version: 0.3
Status: Active