Ben and Kyle asked this question on last night's Exchange Zone Podcast: How do you think the rankings should be configured comparing teams that travel out of state or go to large competitions vs teams that stick with small local meets? Subsequent conversation was around teams that went to the Heartland Classic or Roy Griak while leaving local meets with JV runners or not attending at all during the week. Seems to be diminishing traditionally large, in-state, local meets (Tom Karpan, Mike Carr, Rich Engel...) - their opinions, not mine. Here's how I answer this question with the data I can gather. 1) Team rankings are derived by a hypothetical race of all runners in that gender/class. 2) Those hypothetical race results are based on individual ratings. 3) Individual ratings are derived by head-to-head results at meets - only Iowa runners are included. So what does this mean? It doesn't matter to my system whether or not they run in state or out of state. What matters is how they finish against other Iowa runners. Want a higher team ranking? Get higher individual ratings. What higher individual ratings? Compete against and beat runners who have higher ratings than you. With the exception of the top rated runner at the meet, every runner has the opportunity to improve their rating at every race, and therefore, improve their team ranking.