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<p>Wednesday was already supposed to be a big day for Wyoming Valley Conference cross country.</p><p>It got a whole lot more important when rain on scheduled competition days and wet course conditions that made new dates impossible conspired to keep the regular season from being completed on time.</p><p>Four cluster meets never got rescheduled.</p><p>Instead, the 39 duals that would have been contested at those clusters will all be scored from Wednesday&#8217;s results in the Ed Narkiewicz Conference Coaches&#8217; Meet, along with the overall team competition.</p><p>&#8220;For the Wyoming Valley Conference to crown a league champion, there are several meets that have to be run off and will be scored out based upon the results of our coaches association meet,&#8221; said Lake-Lehman coach John Sobocinski, who also serves as president of WVC cross country.</p><p>Sobocinski said it just was not possible for teams to complete all their meets this season.</p><p>&#8220;We did our best to get as many meets in as we possibly could,&#8221; said Sobocinski, whose team is one of seven that will conduct one third of its regular-season competition &#8211; six of 18 meets &#8211; Wednesday. &#8220;We had two home meets on our course at Lake-Lehman and both times, when the kids came back they were pretty sloppy.</p><p>&#8220;The conditions were rough.&#8221;</p><p>It all makes for a complicated day of scoring Wednesday.</p><p>For example, while Holy Redeemer is trying to finish an unbeaten dual season to take the WVC championship, it will also be seeking the coaches&#8217; meet title. While Dallas tries to defend conference meet titles, its teams &#8211; the girls in particular &#8211; will be hoping for the help needed to pull off unlikely extensions of its regular-season championships streaks.</p><p>Teams and runners will compete just once, starting with the varsity girls race at 3 p.m. The same set of results that will be used for scoring all the teams against each other for an overall meet champion will also be used to score certain sets of teams against each other to complete the dual-meet schedule. The differences in the way those results fall in large and multi-team competitions make it possible a team could finish above an opponent in the conference meet standings while losing to them in a dual at the same time.</p><p>Sobocinski said it is not unprecedented for the league meet to be used to score an uncompleted regular-season meet. The volume of meets being decided Wednesday, however, is unprecedented.</p><p>The meets left to be decided are not just plentiful, but also include some of the most important competitions of the season.</p><p>Unlike other sports that have had to jam games in back-to-back, the nature of cross country training and the existence of major multi-team meets on many weekends during the season make it difficult to force extra meets into the schedule on consecutive days.</p><p>Instead on day&#8217;s results can be used in many ways.</p><p>Hazleton Area and Holy Redeemer, the last two unbeatens on the boys side, run against each other.</p><p>Holy Redeemer has the most direct path to a potential title. The Royals are 15-0 with three meets left. They also run against Crestwood and MMI.</p><p>Hazleton Area (12-0) has six meets left to be decided. In addition to facing Holy Redeemer, the Cougars also go against third-place Lake-Lehman (11-1) and Hanover Area (11-4).</p><p>Lake-Lehman&#8217;s six opponents include Hazleton Area, Dallas (13-2) and Wyoming Area (11-4).</p><p>The Holy Redeemer girls (15-0) have already beaten second-place Dallas (14-1), but still face their next strongest threat in Hazleton Area (11-1). They also have to get by Hanover Area (13-2).</p><p>Dallas still has to take care of its own meets while waiting for help. It goes against Lake-Lehman (10-2) and Wyoming Valley West (9-3).</p><p>Hanover Area and Crestwood (10-2) run against each other and also maintain slim title hopes.</p><p>Hazleton Area, Lake-Lehman, Wyoming Valley West, Crestwood, Tunkhannock and MMI Prep will have one-third of their regular season &#8211; six of 18 meets &#8211; decided Wednesday.</p><p>The varsity boys meet is scheduled for 3:45 p.m., followed by junior high girls at 4:30 and junior high boys at 5.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Tom Robinson</p><p>For Times Leader</p></bylineMeta></div>

Weather forces WVC cross country season into a hectic finish