Cross Country Medals

Traditionally, cross country races take place in the fall and winter, and they take place across multiple levels of participation. Athletes often use cross country racing as a way to train for more traditional road races and other track events. But the completion of these races requires hard work and training in their own right.

With its unique status as both a team sport and an individual competition, a lot goes into preparing for a cross-country race. The best case scenario for any team is for all members of the team to finish in the first five to seven places in the race. Each runner to finish is assigned a point total equal to the place in which they finished (one point for first place, two points for second, and so on), and the team with the lowest score wins. 

However, since it’s not always likely that any given team will perform in exactly that manner, the teams have to employ a strategy to win. Since the two team members with the highest point total are dropped from the total score of the team, the best bet is to make sure that those two runners place in such a manner that they can hurt the final run times of the next closest team. In this sense, there’s a distinction to be made between the best overall performance in a race and the best teammate. 

It’s exactly this type of distinction that makes cross-country medals so crucial to the sport. Because medals and challenge coins have historically been used to reward get performance as well as instill a sense of unity amongst a team, they’re perfectly situated for cross country runners. Each team member can have a team medal that signifies their belonging and their place within the group, while each individual runner pushes his or herself hard to earn the individual achievement medals. Meanwhile, all participants in the race can feel accomplished regardless of where they finish by earning finisher medals.