MISQUAH — The chute is forty feet of rope funnel past the finish line, and it exists because seventy-four runners arrive at one point in eleven minutes and somebody has to keep them in order long enough to write the order down.

The job: one person calls numbers, two write, one hands each finisher a popsicle stick with a place number on it, one keeps the runners moving out the far end so the chute does not back up, and one stands at the entrance and makes sure nobody’s parent walks into it, which is the hardest of the six and is given to whoever is most comfortable telling adults no.

The sticks are a paper backup for the timing system, which Koski has run since 2019 and which has failed once, at Braham in 2022, on a day the sticks saved the meet.

Volunteers are asked not to cheer, because a person yelling a name at the chute entrance produces a runner who turns her head, and a runner who turns her head at that moment falls down. Two of Saturday’s six had done it before. Four had not. Nobody fell down.

They were released at 12:20.

Braham provides its own chute Saturday. Koski needs a fifth van driver instead; the van leaves at eight.