The Basics

Meets and Squads

Cross Country is a no-cuts sport. West Women's Cross Country welcomes runners of all experience and speed to enjoy the sport and team spirit! All runners qualify for the Junior Varsity (JV) team; the Varsity squad is selected based upon speed. 

Meets are typically divided by gender, and then by Junior Varsity and Varsity races. The order of the boys' and girls' races alternates each year. Odd years, girls go first; even, boys. Girls will run first in the fall 2022 season, resulting in a typical meet order of Varsity Girls, Varsity Boys, JV Girls, JV Boys. The distance of all races is 5 kilometers (5K or 3.1 miles). 

Seven runners comprise the varsity squad for most regular-season meets. Varsity runners for the first meet are the fastest seven finishers from the intersquad time trial at season's start. For the rest of the season, the fastest seven finishers overall, JV and Varsity combined, from each meet, compose the varsity squad for the following meet. This means that athletes running JV in one meet can qualify to run on the varsity squad for the next meet. 

Season Schedule

In 2023, we'll compete in six invitationals as well as the conference grade-level challenge meet. After the invitational series, we will run the City and Big Eight Conference championships. Finally, varsity will run in the WIAA Sectional Championships, followed by the WIAA State Championships if we qualify. See the Championships page for more information. 

Get the schedule details here. 

Meet Scoring

In cross country, the lower a score a team receives, the better! A team's score is calculated by summing the places of its first five finishers. A perfect score would be 15: to achieve this score, a team's first five runners would have to finish first, second, third, fourth and fifth. Places 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are added together to make 15. 

For some real-world examples, consider our sweep of the 2021 Madison City Championships. Our JV squad took places 1,2,3,4,5,(6),(7),(8) an (10) for a score of 15. Varsity received a score of 26, by taking places 2,4,5,7,8 (9) and (11).