A pair of Gilbert cross country seniors on the 3x defending state champion boys team, are closing in on history… The story of how Logan Bleich and Jacob Tallman became some of the fastest runners in the state. @ghsiowa @KCCINews @CullenJHolt @IHSAA

The first DyeStatXC Individual Rankings of the 2026 season are out. Check out the complete breakdown of the early season top 100 individual boys ➡️ buff.ly/u9xnQ9M

What better way to cap off the first week of school than some 500s on the track? Guys looked great and are ready to race next Tuesday at Webster City.

Does it seem like there are a lot of goals during stoppage time in the World Cup? Data backs this up. But why? When you run the numbers of how many goals per minute there were during each phase of the game for the entirety of the group stages, this is what you get: An average goals per minute of 2.1 for the first 90 minutes, and then that jumps to 3.2 during the final stoppage time. It’s not just this world cup either, Across large datasets (European and South American leagues, FIFA and UEFA tournaments), goal scoring follows a rising hazard rate — the probability of a goal increases as a match progresses, with the 76–90 window the single most prolific (roughly 19–25% of all goals depending on the dataset). Why does scoring cluster late? 1. Physiology We get tired and sloppy which opens things up. High-intensity running drops 20–45% in the final 15 minutes of elite matches.Passing accuracy, dribbling, and decision-making measurably decline in the final 20 minutes. Tired players lose their shape and costly giveaways increase. This helps, but in all honesty is a small piece of the puzzle. How do we know this? Because if fatigue was the main driver than in games that went into extra time, then scoring should go up significantly from 90min to 120min. But it doesn’t. Stoppage time still has a higher rate. 2. Psychology We’re always running a kind of calculus, a risk versus reward. We experience this in endurance sport as the angel and devil on our shoulder telling us to slow down or push on. If the reward is more than the risk, we’re able to put forth more effort. The same thing occurs in team sport. For much of the game, there’s a downside to being overly aggressive. You open up the field and make a crucial mistake giving away a goal. With a few minutes left, the risk calculus changes. Players are no longer worried about being exposed or making a mistake, it’s about survival. For the trailing team, it’s score or lose. We can see this in a theory established well away from the sports fields, prospect theory. It tells us when people perceive themselves as facing a nearly certain loss, they become more willing to gamble to escape it. So the trailing team throws numbers forward and accepts the risk, which opens up the field at both ends. There’s more space all around, and players are more fatigued, so you’ve got a higher chance for chaos, and quick counter attacks. Simply, urgency raises risk tolerance, and risk creates chances. FIFA essentially proved this with a natural experiment. In 1993, they intdouced the Golden goal rule for extra time. They thought it’d make extra time more attack eccentric. But instead, it did the opposite. The sudden-death stakes created what researchers and coaches described as an "extreme fear of conceding." Teams retreated into defensive schemes, afraid to fail, and instead played to reach penalty kicks. FIFA abolished it in 2004. We can also see the impact in another rule change. Because of the hydration breaks, we’re having longer stoppage time. Instead of just 2-3 minutes to throw everything at the wall, there’s now often 5-7 minutes. Once again, the psychology comes into play. The uncertainty increased once you see 90 minutes is up and the ultimate decision of when to blow the whistle is up to the referee. If you’ve got 7 minutes of that time, it equals more chances. Put it all together and extra-time shifts the calculus. It moves it from protection, fear of making a mistake, to a bit of desperation on one side, which opens the game up and fuels scoring on the other as well. So next time you’re doing something challenging that takes a lot of effort, and may come with a bit of embarrassment or judgment if you screw up, think about how you shift the calculus in your favor. -Steve