The first five runners from each team to cross the finish line receive the points that correspond to their place. The first place runner receives one point, the second place runner two, and so on. The team receiving the lowest score wins.
The sixth and seventh runners on a team, although they don’t receive a score, can also be important, in that they can “displace” scoring runners from the other team. For example, consider this race:
In this meet situation, we win 28-31.
As you can see, even though our sixth and seventh place runners’ scores were not added into the total, they did well enough to displace the other team's 4th and 5th place runners’ scores, and give the win to us. They essentially "stole" the points for 9th and 10th place and made the 4th and 5th finishers from the other team score higher- 11 and 12 points respectively. The #6 and #7 runners play a very important role and can win the meet for their team. If our #6 and #7 runners ended up finishing AFTER the opponent's #5 runner, the opponent's #4 and #5 runners would have earned 9 and 10 points respectively. And they would have beaten us, 27 to 28.
A score of 27 or less always wins a meet, as does having the first, second and third place winners, with at least five runners finishing. This final instance is called a “sweep”. This only pertains to dual meets.