Several students are competing in a series of three races.  A student earns $5$ points for winning a race, $3$ points for finishing second and $1$ point for finishing third.  There are no ties.  What is the smallest number of points that a student must earn in the three races to be guaranteed of earning more points than any other student?
$\text{(A)}\ 9 \qquad \text{(B)}\ 10 \qquad \text{(C)}\ 11 \qquad \text{(D)}\ 13 \qquad \text{(E)}\ 15$
There are two ways for a student to get $11$: $5+5+1$ and $5+3+3$.  Clearly if someone gets one of these combinations someone else could get the other, so we are not guaranteed the most points with $11$.
There is only one way to get $13$ points: $5+5+3$.  In this case, the largest score another person could get is $5+3+3=11$, so having $13$ points guarantees having more points than any other person $\rightarrow \boxed{\text{D}}$.