The Cross Country boys team received, what was first thought to be a devastating loss, at their annual conference meet. At the awards it was announced that Grain Valley had beaten Platte County, despite a tie in the overall points.
In cross-country, teams compete with seven runners, and the top five runners score points for their team, this is based on placements meaning that first place would receive one point, second place would receive 2 points, etc., and similar to golf the team with the least amount of points wins. However, in the case of a tie, which occurred on Saturday’s conference meet, between Platte County and Grain Valley, whichever team’s sixth runner crosses the finish line first wins. Junior Eli Jackson happened to be Platte County’s number 6 during the race, however, a unique problem occurred, in which his timing chip fell off.
”During the second loop, there was a big downhill and I tripped over a stump, and during that, it fell off, and obviously, after that, I didn’t get the time,” Jackson said
This was initially disappointing to the boy’s team, as the previous year Grain Valley got an unexpected win against Platte County during the conference meet, and just two weeks before the 2024 conference, Platte County had beaten Grain Valley by five points at their home course. However, after Grain Valley’s win was announced questions were raised about Jacksons placement as compared to Grain Valley’s number six runner, freshman Colby Sinn.
”I was always suspicious because obviously I knew I beat that guy, but I didn’t know we had both tied at [29] points and once I knew that I knew we had to have won because I beat him,” Jackson said. For a couple of days, the question was up in the air about who had won, and a thorough review of the footage was clearly needed. But then news eventually came through in the form of a PC Preps Extra article released on Tuesday night, which made the win for platte county official. “There was a PC preps article on that, and after that it was official,” Jackson said
This victory for the team was extremely satisfying, the grit and hard-wordk the team puts in every day really paid off for this meet.
