Cross Country Championship Season

        November marks the beginning of the championship racing season for high school and college Cross Country. As a student, I competed in Cross Country throughout high school and college; today, I coach the sport at the collegiate level. My men’s team raced in their conference championship this past weekend and they finished in second place in the conference. It is no surprise that Cross Country is not really on the radar in terms of sports that people enjoy watching. Admittedly, it is not the most exciting sport for people who are not directly involved in it (coaches, athletes, and parents). I happen to be extremely passionate about the sport, but I realize that I am a rare exception to the rule. To simplify for those not familiar with the sport, it goes something like this:

First - Some gawky looking athletes line up on an open field, where an old man holding a pistol tells the athletes to strip down. Fortunately, this is not as bad as it sounds: the pistol is only a starting pistol, and strip down means to take everything off but the racing uniform.

*Somewhere in this process, nervous athletes run to the bathroom an unspecified number of times.

Second – Athletes approach the line, wearing singlets and a) short shorts, or b) butthuggers/lollipops. Honestly, these are the terms that we use.

Oregon Singlet

Third – The aforementioned old man fires the pistol, and the aforementioned scantily-clad athletes make a mad dash for the woods like a stampede of buffalo.

Fourth – Athletes disappear into the woods for what can be quite an extended period of time, some coaches attempt to catch glimpses of their athletes for a few seconds. Races typically vary in distance from 2.5 miles to 6.2 miles.

Fifth – Athletes emerge from the woods, making a mad dash for the finish line: spectators yell, scream, and ring their cowbells.

Sixth – Athletes can be seen laughing, crying, and vomiting. It is not all that rare for an athlete to do all of these activities simultaneously.

You call this fun?

Yes, it really is that simple! The part that is not so simple is the Cross Country scoring system. A standard Cross Country team has seven athletes, teams can of course be bigger than this, but only seven athletes can contribute to a team’s score. Unlike most other sports, the team that wins in a Cross Country race is the team that accrues the fewest number of points. Points are assigned based on place number to the first five members of a team. For example, an athlete that comes in third place will earn three points for their team. The role of the sixth and seventh members of a team is to displace athletes from other teams. In order for this to happen, a sixth or seventh runner must beat the fifth runner or better from another team. The sixth and seventh runners will not earn any points for their team unless there is a tie, but by beating a top five athlete from another team they will push them back a place (displace), thereby adding points to an opposing team’s overall score.

The origins of the sport are interesting and can be traced back to England, two hundred years ago. The following link gives a brief history of the sport.  http://www.runnersworld.com/rt-columns/origins-cross-country

Historical Cross Country

My favorite part of Cross Country is that it is a sport almost everyone can do. Most high schools do not make cuts and those athletes cut from other sports will often join their school’s Cross Country team. It’s a team sport and teams develop incredible camaraderie, but it is also very individual because athletes strive to improve upon their own performances week after week. One day, I hope to be a high school coach that is as inspiring and influential as my own high school coach, Coach T.

Numbers – Cardinal v. Ordinal

Today’s grammar topic is ordinal and cardinal numbers, a topic which can prove difficult for beginner ESL students. Cardinal numbers are the ones that students typically learn first, they are used to describe quantity or answer the question “how many?” On the other hand, ordinal numbers are used to show position in relation to other objects. Ordinal numbers always use a suffix, these suffixes can be –nd, -rd,   -st, or –th. In addition to using ordinal numbers to show position, ordinal numbers are used in dates, take a look at this example: March 31, 2014 – This would be read as March thirty-first as opposed to March thirty-one, even though there is no –st marker on the number. An easy way to remember the difference between cardinal and ordinal numbers is to associate cardinal with the word counting and ordinal with the word ordering.

One difficult example we will look at is in the sentence “Points are assigned based on place number to the first five members of a team.” In this example, a cardinal and ordinal number are used together. When this occurs, the cardinal number is being treated as a group and the ordinal number is describing where this group is in relation to other groups (as opposed to the second group of five).

Try to take all the numbers that are italicized, and categorize them based on whether they are cardinal or ordinal numbers.

 Cardinal                                        Ordinal

Vocabulary

Admittedly – Word used to introduce something that is true

Gawky – Nervous and awkward

Unspecified – Not a specific amount

Singlets – Typically singlets are one piece uniforms that are worn by wrestlers, but in the running community the term singlet refers to the racing jersey, which is only a shirt

Butthuggers/Lollipops – These terms refer to the racing shorts that are sometimes worn by female athletes. As one might imagine, these are tight shorts that are not unlike swimwear or underwear.

Scantily-Clad – Not wearing a lot of clothes

Simultaneously – Happening at the same time

Vocabulary Activity – Fill in the blanks with the defined vocabulary words

1. He moved out of the country and will be gone for an ____________ number of years.

2. No one expected Tim would make it through the basketball tryouts, he had always been a _________ teenager.

3. During the summer, it’s very likely that you will see many ____________ people on the beach.

4. Almost all Cross Country athletes wear __________, whereas only female athletes will wear _____________.

5. It was __________ frightening and annoying.

6. _________, it is very expensive but you don’t need to buy it that often.