You may be asking yourself how XC came to be a common sport in the U.S, well believe it or not XC was not started in the U.S, it actually started in England. The sport originated from the "Crick Run" held every year since 1838 at a rugby school in England. After XC was introduced to England after the late 1830's many private schools in England practiced, and participated in XC. In 1878 the United States was introduced to XC by a man named William C. Vosburgh. At first when it was introduced to the United States the sport was used as training/ conditioning for Track and Field Athletics. Despite the start of the sport as being used for training, 9 years later XC running became a formal sport. Before the 1960's only men where allowed to run the sport, but during the 1960's the International Amateur Athletic Federation, allowed women to run XC for the first time !
Just like in many sports there is a scoring system for XC as well. The scoring system in XC is very complicated but I will try to explain as clearly as possible. In XC the scoring system goes in points. Take the varsity race for example, the minimum runners you need for the varsity team is 5, the most you can have is 7. So when varsity runners finish the place they come in, that is the amount of points they get. The highest amount of points a varsity squad of 7 could earn is 28 because if the runners from the same team came after each other in a consecutive order like beginning from 1st place to 7th place ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) that adds up to 28 so that is the highest amount of points the varsity team could earn in a race. XC is a very complicated sport, but fun one too !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_country_running
