XC Tie breaker

[Chris Hubbard]

Brian,

How does the software handle tie breakers? We had two teams score equal points, normally we'd look at the 6th runners to break the tie. The software didn't list the team with the the higher finisher ahead of the other team.

Any insight would be great. Thanks

[reece.bell]

Chris I just checked and you are right. Looks like it is giving the win to the team with the 1st place runner instead of using 6th place as the tie breaker.

[Chris Hubbard]

Enough with the personal emails, I didn't ask for anything to change. I just want clarification of how it is set up. We work NCAA events as well as high school XC in several states. All the rules are similar but have small differences. We scored a high school sectional incorrectly because I didn't look at the tie breaker.

The Agee software looks like it's based on the current NCAA rules as follows in-

NCAA

CROSS COUNTRY/

TRACK& FIELD

2015 AND 2016 RULES 

RULE 8 Cross Country
SECTION 6. Scoring Team Composition 

Team Scoring 

ARTICLE 3.

d. Ties in team scoring shall be broken by comparing in order the place finish of each of the five scoring members of the tied teams. The team with the majority of winning comparisons shall be awarded the higher place. 

[Ohio Race Day]

I found this from Sean and was going to reply by personal email just to mess with your head.  LOL.  See the link below.  Seems like the same thing that you concluded.


Tie Breaker in Cross Country

[Chris Hubbard]

Brian,

I see you commented in another post but not here. I've received a good number of personal emails about this issue.

Can you please state what the 'Official' software criteria is for tie breaking AND if there could be a way to override tie breakers for all of us using the system that are required to use a different method?

[Peak Performance Timing]

Maybe he could add a box in race setup where you could choose your preferred tie breaking method like the number of runners and displacers?

[Brian Agee]

Sorry for the wait, last week (Friday night - Tuesday afternoon) we timed 12 events in three different states. This included a Cross Country race on Tuesday that was decided by a single point, and the Springfield Marathon events that consisted of a 5K on Saturday night and a 10K, Half Marathon, Marathon, and Marathon Relay on Sunday morning. We captured the chip start and split times on the course (both worked great!), and we setup an announcer station before the finish line, the results kiosk, and everything else the system offers. All of the races went flawlessly. :)

I was only able to tackle the most urgent emails until I could finally get my head above water later this week. I'll paste some videos below for anyone that would like to see how we did all of this.

Tonight I decided to finally tackle tie breaks in XC scoring. It's been on my to-do list for quiet a while, but it's been difficult to jump into it because I found that different governing bodies over XC use totally different rules. Also, it appears that the rules change frequently. So I decided to take my best crack at adding all of the common rules used by these governing bodies, and I even added in one that I don't believe any of them uses - but I can see them considering it in the future.

I just pushed out an update that allows you to select one of the following tie break methods when you create/edit a race:

1. First Displacer = Score of the first displacer. Teams without a displacer will place below those with a displacer. If neither team has a displacer, the place will be determined by the total score up to the last scoring member (for example the score based on the top 4 scorers for each team instead of the top 5 scorers). If the score is still the same, the teams will be placed by fastest average time of all scoring members.
2. First Scorer = The score of the first scoring member for each team.
3. Last Scorer = The score of the last scoring member on each team.
4. Average Time of Scorers = Fastest total time of all scoring members of each team. If the average time is the same, the score of the first scoring member is used to determine place.

I know most of you are in the middle of a busy timing season, so I was very careful to make sure this udpate is clean and will not cause any problems. I am trying to avoid doing any major additions or changes until the winter time, but I wanted to go ahead and get this fixed because within the past week I've had two reports of a the system not handling a tie correctly. They had to write on the report the correct team place after looking at the printed results to determine the actual winner of the tie. Hopefully the options above cover everything that the other systems do (and more). Let me know if anything is missing.

I love all of the feedback I've been getting over the past few weeks with how well the system has been performing for everyone. Nearly everyone is reporting 100% read rates, so keep up the good work!!! Make sure you know the 'rules' of using UHF if you use a different setup than what I recommend. Here is a few videos from this past weekend for those that are interested:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykmXEm-3fEo
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-4t4fxjVyA
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_svfmjc9f4

[Chris Hubbard]

Thanks for the update. We're also doing multiple events every weekend. 

My only question or observation- none of those conform to NCAA rules as listed above.

[Chris Hubbard]

I really do appreciate the feedback.

[Chris Hubbard]

Just finished setting up the next round of XC races. The new tie breaker option is great. Thanks Brian!

[Brian Agee]

Well.... Crap! :)   I thought I had everything covered by doing some searches online. Should have carefully read each of the posts on this thread.

Not trying to be lazy here, but wouldn't the "Average Time of Scorers" order everyone correctly based on the NCAA rules? I can't imagine a scenario where a place by place comparison of the scorers would give the edge to a team that averaged a slower time.

[Chris Hubbard]

It probably would. I'll run some practice races and see how they come out. My concern is that we are timing the NCAA D2 regional this year and they sent over a page specifically on tie breakers.

[rickcummins05]

Brian,

Average Time of Scorers will not cover the NCAA rules in many cases.  An example of the cases are as follows:

Team 1 has a stud at the front - wins the race by 45 seconds

Team 2 has a number one finish in second but is 45 seconds back

teams 2 beats team 1 at 3 of the subsequent 4 positions but each spot they are close

Team 1 will have a lower (better) average time but team #2 would win the NCAA tie breaker 3-2

#1:  Blue #1........24:15

#2:  Red #1........25:00

#13:  Red #2......26:00

#14:  Blue #2.....26:01

#22:  Red #3.......26:15

#23:  Blue #3.......26:16

#30:  Red #4.....26:30

#31:  Blue #4.....26:31

#35:  Blue #5.....26:40

#37:  Red #5........26:44

Blue:  1+14+23+31+35 = 104 points

Red:  2+13+22+30+37 = 104 points

Red is 44seconds faster as a team (@8sec average) but loses the NCAA tie break 3-2 (Blue Wins:  #1 & #5 / Red Wins: #2,#3, & #4)

I hope this helps

[Chris Hubbard]

Thanks for doing the footwork on that! We do a lot of NCAA XC so it's important to our business.

[Brian Agee]

Thanks for the example, I'm sure that took quiet a bit of time. I will have an update this weekend that will have this option available. Let me know if anyone is timing an NCAA XC race before this weekend. My wife is going to Disney world with some girl friends from Friday-Tuesday, so I plan on getting quiet a bit of work done while she's away. If I need to work on it before this weekend then I'll shuffle my schedule around and make it happen.

[Chris Hubbard]

Thanks again for the pending update. Our next event is the NCAA D2 Regional on Nov 7th.