Cross Country 2026

Showed up to a race with numbered popsicle sticks and legal envelopes.

As runner finished they were handed a numbered stick and headed to their coach

On envelope was 1-7 , coach wrote names and position numbered on stick , Then tallied  1-5 and handed us back envelope with all sticks in to verify and winners were announced . We knew order of team finish within 5 minutes. For times a simple tic sheet then everything was combined at home later with using  Lotus as spreadsheet. 

Found a printer that was a runner that was trying bib numbers with a perforated tear tag, and it was a hit!  We made posts for finish chutes and with bent hangers pulled tags and put face down on hanger ( later to be custom stringers ) and finish order was in our hand .  Early time were using the fancy Seiko system stopwatch S129 with a printer, then moved to the Time Machine to collect times and import into laptops .

Our early timing program ( 1985 ) was RunScore written by Alan J. NASA engineer

the program we continue to use to this day .

After years of pull tags and finish chutes as the End Result Company we introduced ChampionChip to Indiana . Our first XC race was the Ben Davis Invite at the time a huge HS event. Kids had a waterproof tag to lace on their shoe, mondo timing mats to run across and a device called the EAR collected

the times thru a program our Josh wrote called collector bringing in times to Runscore and matching bib numbers .  Now the 500 mini and no more 200 foot finish chutes (10) and tear tags , just cross the finish and data flows in. 

As ChampionChip upgrade readers smaller and timing mats lighter, Ipeco showed up with reusable timing tags that the timer owned. Also the timing mats were more like carpet , lighter storage was batter as you could roll up. The readers were advancing so we ended up as US distributer or equipment.

As timer went on and equipment kept advancing we made a change 

Also in the market  MyLaps.  Timers choice in the in early 2000's. As End Result we had alot of readers. No more external modems to get remote data to us at finish line . Technology was good but it was time to switch again !

ER was sold , sold my running stores, but still loved timing XC.  Trident Timing Systems entered our world. Based in Australia, our friends that started Ipeco started Trident .  Very portable systems that require a small footprint to transport and a very quick setup We now can code our own tags , time a race from anywhere with the internet connections. But there is nothing like being onsite at a race.  We still use RunScore as some thigs stand the test of time .