Team Scoring for the US Skyrunner Series - Worked Example Using Western States

Recently I posted an outline of team scoring for the 2015 US Skyrunner Series here, allowing runners to identify with both the elite and mass participation teams through geography (US States or foreign countries). The main aim is to add an extra dimension to ultras and make it more interesting to follow a given race. We'll soon have some very exciting news about live tracking of every runner at every 2015 event, which should include real-time team scoring...not just from aid stations but at any point in the race. That should be much more exciting to follow, plus it gives added depth and detail to following individual runners.

After discussions with a lot of interested parties I decided to create a worked example to show how the team scoring looks in practice. Given I don't have enough data from the 2014 US Skyrunner Series races to hand, I opted for an international race with all the information required already in the public domain - Western States 2014.

In looking through the numbers I made one change to my original proposed structure for scoring - to make the penalty for not having enough runners be 50 points per runners, not 25 points. So this is how the scoring works:

Elite team scoring:

Every runner counts for the State or Country they enter under originally for their residence, even if they move before race day. Otherwise the manual changes take forever when compiling results.

Cross-country scoring with the top two men and one woman from a team counting by adding their gender positions. For example, a team with men in 2nd and 3rd plus the 1st woman would score 6 points (2+3+1). If there are not enough finishers of the correct sexes for a team to complete their three finishers then each missing runner scores 50 points, so the previously mentioned team score without a female finisher would score 55 points (2+3+50). The most an elite team can score is 150 and if a team's runner is lower than 50th place for their gender then they still score 50 points at worst. This is important for scoring throughout a season in a league, otherwise one bad result can add so much to a competitive team that they lose any chance of doing well over the entire Series.

Full team scoring:

Every runner counts for the State or Country they enter under originally  for their residence even if they move before race day, including elites. Otherwise the manual changes take forever when compiling results, especially with hundreds or thousands of entrants.

The average position of the runners in their gender is the number that counts for scoring, with a bonus for the more runners they have. A minimum of 3 finishers is required to score, otherwise a team scores 1 point below the lowest team with 3 finishers.

The State or country with the most runners in a race gets a 5 point deduction from their score, second largest gets 4 points off, third largest gets 3 points off, fourth largest gets 2 points off and the 5th largest gets a single point off their score.

For example, if Colorado has the most runners in a race and the average finisher's position in their gender is 42.567 then we round to one decimal place then deduct the 5 point bonus to give a score of 37.6.

Single race v entire Series:

I aim to include scoring for every distance at every event to give a result for the individual race plus a league table over the season. I guess I'll get comments about how all the scoring favors the States that hold more races since it's easier to get locals to turn up, but the bonus points' system only gives a slight advantage to big numbers. Regarding the elite races, 2015 should see some high-level competition across the entire Series, meaning that the States with the best mountain runners should do better in the elite rankings and they aren't punished too much if they can't get a full scoring team out given it only requires two men and one woman and there's only so many points that can be added as a penalty.

Worked example - WS100 2014

Linked to this article is the full set of results here. But below I also include the top 10 for the elite and mass participation races. California has by far the most entrants (it's almost certainly always the case that the home State or country will have the most runners), but it doesn't win the mass participation team competition. Australia benefits from a perfect storm for the mass participation race in this case since it has exactly 3 finishers, all relatively near the front of the race.

Elite team scoring:

Elite Team Place	State/Country	Abbreviation	Finishers	Elite score
1	California	CA	119	17
2	Oregon	OR	18	20
3	Australia	AUS	3	54
4	Montana	MT	2	57
5	Colorado	CO	10	70
6	Texas	TX	11	72
7	Wisconsin	WI	3	100
8	Arizona	AZ	7	101
9	New Hampshire	NH	1	102
10	France	FRA	1	103

Full elite scores here. It reflects what we would expect at WS, in that the top teams are generally from the States with the biggest populations of elite 100-milers. Note that the competitiveness doesn't go very deeply and that only 29 of 64 States or countries managed to get under the lowest possible score of 150.

Mass participation team scoring:

Mass Team Place	State/Country	Abbreviation	Finishers	Total Score	Average Score	Adj Score for <3 finishers="" td="">	Point deduction for high finisher numbers	Final score
1	Australia	AUS	3	54	18	18	0	18
2	New Jersey	NJ	3	98	32.7	32.7	0	32.7
3	Wisconsin	WI	3	187	62.3	62.3	0	62.3
4	Oregon	OR	18	1257	69.8	69.8	-4	65.8
5	Colorado	CO	10	706	70.6	70.6	-2	68.6
6	New York	NY	5	350	70	70	0	70
7	Canada	CAN	8	615	76.9	76.9	-1	75.9
8	Minnesota	MN	4	328	82	82	0	82
9	Connecticut	CT	3	260	86.7	86.7	0	86.7
10	Japan	JPN	3	266	88.7	88.7	0	88.7

For the mass participation team scoring the top 10 is dramatically different. California is down in 14th after winning the elite race, despite getting the 5 point deduction for having the most finishers. 

Call for comment

Ultimately, this is only worthwhile if it creates more excitement around the US Skyrunner Series races, both for fans and for following friends and relatives. I know that as I worked out the tables above I was rooting for the places I personally have an affiliation to, so I hope others get that same buzz.

Whatever form of team scoring is ultimately decided on is likely to apply to all Skyrunning events globally, not just the US Series, so it will have slight differences from country to country in terms of how magnetism there are (e.g. UK races could be split into England, Wales, Scotland, North Ireland and all other countries...or broken down into smaller areas).

Does this form of point scoring make sense and is there a better way to score? For example, is the 50-point penalty for not having a scoring elite runner fair? I think it's about right so that an elite team can't do really well without 3 scorers but isn't penalized too heavily. Note that Montana fell into this gap since they had the 2nd man and 5th woman, then had no other finishers so had 50 points added for that and still finished 4th in the elite table.

Team Scoring At The US Skyrunner Series

Recently there's been some online and in-person discussion about team scoring surrounding the North Face Endurance Challenge 50-miler in Marin, including some great thoughts from Ryan Ghelfi (his latest blog post). It got me thinking along lines I'd previously considered before being involved in the US Skyrunner Series as the Series Director - namely that sports need teams for people to support.

Now that I'm in a position to create a system of scoring for teams at a national level, I decided to relate my thoughts in a blog to get comments before putting it into practice, so please let me know what you think. Bear in mind a couple of constraints - there's no budget for offering prize money for this in 2015 and there's no time to create a budget...but this may kick start that side of things for 2016.

As an additional feature, I'm currently working on a way to include live, real-time scoring during each race for teams but details are not ready to be released yet.

Scoring principles:

Here are the key elements I'd like to incorporate in team scoring:

1. Allow both elites and the entire field to effect the scoring.
2. Incorporate both women and men into a combined score for both elites and the entire field.
3. Create teams that people will genuinely care about.
4. Only include it if it adds something to a given race and/or the entire Series.

To achieve these aims I'm considering scoring for both the top runners and the entire field, but with the top runners still scoring for the masses as well. To get people behind teams, I believe the most effective common denominator is geography as this is what works in basically every sport globally. Then I hope the combination of these factors makes it of interest and gets people psyched to run for and support their team.

The geographical scoring makes most sense if based on US States plus international countries, given all the races are in the US. Every State will score in every race even if they have no runners - see the scoring described below. Only countries with finishers will be included, but once they have a single finisher in a single race they will be scored in every race, even if they have no runners.

Elite team scoring:

Cross-country scoring is tried and tested, so I propose that the top two men and one woman from a team have they gender positions added up. For example, a team with men in 2nd and 3rd plus the 1st woman would score 6 points (2+3+1). If there are not enough finishers for a team to complete their three finishers then each missing runner scores 25 points, so the previously mentioned team score without a female finisher would score 30 points (2+3+25). The most a team can score is 75 and if a team's runner is lower than 25th place then they still score 25 points at worst.

Full team scoring:

Every runner counts for the State or Country they enter under originally (even if they move before race day), including elites. The average position of the runners in their gender is the number that counts for scoring, with a bonus for the more runners they have.

The State or country with the most runners in a race gets a 5 point deduction from their score, second largest gets 4 points off, third largest gets 3 points off, fourth largest gets 2 points off and the 5th largest gets a single point off their score. The lowest score possible is 1 point above the worst scoring team that has finishers. This score applies to all teams that fail to have 3 finishers.

For example, if Colorado has the most runners in a race and the average finisher's position in their gender is 22.567th then we round to one decimal place then deduct the 5 point bonus to give a score of 17.6.

Single race v entire Series:

I aim to include scoring for every distance at every event to give a result for the individual race plus a league table over the season. I guess I'll get comments about how all the scoring favors the States that hold more races since it's easier to get locals to turn up, but the bonus points' system only gives a slight advantage to big numbers. Regarding the elite races, 2015 should see some high-level competition across the entire Series, meaning that the States with the best mountain runners should do better in the elite rankings and they aren't punished too much if they can't get a full scoring team out given it only requires two men and one woman and there's only so many points that can be added as a penalty.

Overall thoughts:

There's a degree of trial and error with this approach since it's something new and relies on the races being reasonably geographically diverse and competitive. Both of these elements should increase over time and this is just the first step. Depending on how it goes it could morph into a number of things in 2016, especially with discussions with sponsors to get top athlete's sponsors on board.

Let me know what you think. Is this an exciting addition to the sport of trail running? Does it add something to the US Skyrunner Series? What would you change to my proposal (be realistic as well as ideas for where to aim for the in the longer term)?