Our ratings are derived from a specialized Elo-MMR system, tailored for high school cross country events across Iowa. This system, akin to Elo or Glicko ratings in chess, accommodates multiple participants and forecasts your expected placement based on your historical performance relative to others. Excelling beyond expectations boosts your rating, while falling short lowers it. Essentially, defeating highly-rated competitors can significantly elevate your rating, especially in surprising upsets.
Time is a crucial component in our rating system. At each event, competitors are ranked based on their finish times, irrespective of gender or team division, creating a comprehensive performance score by comparing all participants as if they competed directly against each other.
Recent performance scores play a pivotal role in updating a runner's rating, with a calculated weighting system to ensure that a single poor performance doesn't unduly affect the overall rating. This balance helps maintain a fair and accurate reflection of a runner's capabilities over time.
Unfortunately, no. Our rating system operates on the principle that each competition reflects a best effort. This approach prevents any "gaming" of the system, such as "volatility farming," where one might intentionally underperform to later inflate ratings. The incentive is to consistently perform at your best, promoting fair competition for all.
Freshmen are not currently represented in the data because they were middle school runners the prior year and did not compete against the current cohort. Our ratings algorithm relies on head-to-head results, and without these, freshmen are not yet rated. After their first competition against the high school cohort, they will receive their initial rating. Subsequent competitions will further refine their ratings, and we can expect individual and team rankings to adjust as the new cohort competes.
Currently, our ratings system only includes Iowa runners. Teams competing out-of-state or hosting out-of-state competitors will still be rated against Iowa runners. This approach ensures consistency, as these are the competitors they will face at conference, state-qualifying, and state championship meets.
It may take up to 24 hours for results to be updated on our site. If you notice missing results after two days or encounter any errors or typos, please reach out through our contact page. We aim for accuracy and timeliness but appreciate your help in correcting any discrepancies.
If you have questions not covered here, we're ready to help. Feel free to get in touch, and we'll assist you as soon as possible.