Eating is one of them.

Joking around is another.

Oh, running together is also something they do quite often. They do that quite well, too.

The Beetdiggers - who won last year's state title in Class 5-A without a runner finishing in the top 10 - make sure they get along because they know when it comes to winning state championships, it's not always about who has the fastest runner. It's also about who has the fastest group of runners.

In other words, teams need depth.

"We know the five can't always win it," Jordan senior Aimee Haertel said.

With the cross country state championships just a month away, teams everywhere are holding internal tryouts for the No. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 spots. The top two runners of the team have been figured out, for most schools. And now, it's about the runners who can complement the faster runners in creating the smallest time separation between the No. 1 and No. 5 runners, the ones who score the points. (In cross country, the winner is determined by the team with the lowest score, as first place individually earns one point, second earns two points and so on.)

In some cases, the top five finishers from two different teams can earn the same amount of points and uh-oh, it's the fastest No. 6 runner who determines the winner. If there's still a tie, the No. 7 runner gets to be the deciding factor.

Those scenarios happen often in cross country. They also happen on the state's biggest stage.

Last year, the Timpanogos and Spanish Fork girls' teams were tied for third place at the state championship meet. That meant it was up to the No. 6 runners - in this case, it was Terra Hawkins for Timpanogos and Jessica Hoffman for Spanish Fork. It was Hawkins who finished about eight seconds faster than Hoffman to win the tiebreaker and the team's third-place trophy.

"You can have two or three good runners, but if your fourth or fifth runners are way back there, you're not going to win," Ogden coach Don Hall said. "I always tell our sixth and seventh runners, they count too."

Therefore, it isn't always about athletes like Stephen Clark and Shalaya Kipp (of Skyline), Luke Puskedra (of Judge Memorial), Candace Eddy (of Davis) and Nate Jewkes (of Bingham) - who all could be individual state champions come Oct. 17, when the state meet takes place at Sugar House Park.

Runners like Loren Storey and Emily Hansen (of the Davis girls' team) and Nathan Fletcher and Kevin Kemp (of the Timpview boys' team) can have some pull, too. Those runners helped their respective teams to first-place finishes at the Brigham Young Autumn Classic on Saturday.

In essence, this particular aspect of cross country gives the so-called slow runners a reason to, well, run. Those in cross country know how difficult it is to recruit runners, since coaches are basically asking students to do an activity teenagers view as punishment. Then, coaches said, prospective athletes view the sport as an individual one. Which, to a degree, is true.

But, one coach said, the skeptic-turned-runner will soon learn that the sport involves a certain level of competitiveness.

"By the time we get to the state meet, we're hoping the 6 and 7 are reliable," Bingham coach Jeff Arbogast said. "That's a good thing, reliability. And that they have a good sense of team because they don't only do the mechanical thing of breaking ties, but they also keep the heat on the top five guys. They push all the guys ahead of them, because [the top five runners] don't want to get beat by the alternates."

That's why runners like Jordan's Haertel can't say for sure she'll have her No. 2 spot forever on a team that was so fast as a group that it finished with only a 39.9-second separation time and just 87 points at last year's state meet.

csun@sltrib.com

Running for points

Cross country is a team sport as well as an individual sport. A team's top five runners score points for where they place, the totals are added up, and lowest score wins, with the sixth runner breaking ties.