Derby opinion

[ManyHats]

We had our Pinewood Derby yesterday. We ran 33 scout cars and 28 in an open class. We had no major complaints, so we consider it a success. Between leaders we had conflicting opinions on how the order should run. We ran the scouts down to the 1st-4th position races. Then they switched to the open class and ran it all the way to the end. Then they went back and finished the scouts. I go back and forth on this. It was a long day. We started at 2 and ended around 6. The reason for not finishing the scouts was to keep people there until the end. But several people came just to watch the scouts not leaders, adults and tags. How do you run your derby and what's your opinion?

[Gold Winger]

When I ran the derby for my pack, we ran rank races (Tigers, Wolves, etc.). Then we ran a pack rack. Finally, we ran the adult/sibling race. All races were double elimination. Awards were given after all racing was over. Top five finishers in the pack race went to the district race.

 

No complaints. Usually.

[ManyHats]

We discussed maybe runing one round of scouts and then one of the open class to keep the scouts interest next year.

[Gold Winger]

You have to do what works for you.

 

We held the awards till the end to keep people there. But that didn't always work. Too many kids have too many things going on. Soccer try-outs. Baseball games. Etc.. All that interferes with Scouting activities because it's all "more important."

 

 

 

[msnowman]

We ran 16 Scout Cars and about 30 Open Class cars this year (our biggest field in 8 years). We don't do a double elimination or anything like that - each Scout car races 4 times (twice in each of 2 useable lanes). The times from all four heats are added together, with the lowest total time the winner and on done the line. While these results are being tabulated we run the two heats for the Open Class (and Vintage when we have cars for it). Those results get tabulated while we hand out the award certificates and then we hand out place awards.

 

One thing that cut the time required for our race was having registration for an hour BEFORE race time. Our race was set for 3pm, registration was open from 1:30-2:30 - bring your car, get it signed in and then you are free to leave until race time. This way we were able to get the race underway on time and get out in about two hours.

 

YiS

Michelle

[ManyHats]

Our registration was from 1-2. We had people show up at 12 to register. It was a long day for us.(setup to cleanup - 11:15 to 6:30) 4 hours of racing is a long time for people with little kids. Plus I heard talk of baseball tryouts, etc.

[Gold Winger]

Four hours isn't that long. Look at how long kids will sit in front of the TV.

[Lisabob]

THat does sound like a long day and, having run both all-day affairs and short-and-sweet races, I know that I'm exhausted after a whole day of derby. So I'd have preferred to do all the cub racing up front. Plus, some folks really are not interested in watching adults race each other. This is CUB scouting, not PARENT scouting! But as someone else said, you should do what works for you and since you say things went fairly well, I also wouldn't lose a whole lot of sleep over this one. At least no one was throwing punches - that's when you worry!

[ManyHats]

"punches" - boy you definitely make it sound like we had a successful derby. This is my husband's first year as Cubmaster and I'm Treasurer. (hence the ManyHats) So we run into so and so did it this way and we always do it this way, etc.

[rjscout]

ManyHats,

 

Congratulations on a successful race. This was my first year, as well. After seeing some problems last year, I volunteered to help. Somehow I was put in charge, as well as becoming ACM. The race can be a lot of work (mostly in setup WAY before race day). It is great the hear people talk about how well the race went. Now to top it next year, or at least be just as successful.

 

 

[DYB-Mike]

We recently had our Pinewood Derby. Twenty-eight scout cars were registered.

 

We had our registration and weight-in the night before. Once registered, the cars were kept at the hall. After that, volunteers stayed to assemble the track and decorate. This saved tons of time on race day the next day.

 

The race commenced at 9:00 a.m. (a Saturday) and was over at about noon. We had a good turn out and I believe we retained most if not all of the audience for the duration of the race. We were not competing with any youth sports so that was helpful. I think it would be safe to say that everyone had a good time.

 

The cars each raced three times on each lane of the three-lane track. We have an electronic finish line and the results of each race are automatically uploaded to software that continually updates the times (best, worst, average) of each car and recalculates each cars rank overall. The top three cars, as well as the top in each cub rank, will go on to the District race.

 

We also gave out awards such as Judge's Favorite and Best Paint Job (Im getting deja vu: I think I just wrote about this on another thread). The leaders picked a couple of cars for each of these and the audience voted by a show of applause.

 

We also ran a snack bar that bought in a few dollars for the Pack.

 

We havent raced sibling cars at least for the past several years I am aware of. We were a little unclear about that this year and one sibling car, made by a sister and featuring a small Barbie with a bad haircut, was entered. We used that car just in our opening test race, where it competed against the amazing S car. As they raced down the track I exclaimed to the audience Wow, look at that S car go! Believe it or not it did get some laughs.

 

YIS

Mike

 

[raisinemright]

We have everyone over to my house on one of two days a week before the race to weigh, adjust and quarantine the cars. That way, there are no problems or delays checking in cars the day of the race. Plus, this year, we had one car that was really cool, but the scouts dad didn't realize that the wheels had to maintain the width. So they were able to go home and redesign the car. He still won Best Design.

 

Race day is way over the top with a bunch of small raffle prizes and we raffle off a couple larger items too, like a BB gun or pocketknife. We have a car with a wireless spycam so we'll run that sometimes broadcast on the videoscreen.

 

Sinc ethe winner is decided on elapsed time, next year, we're thinking of running both open and scout class cars together and letting the scoring computer decide the winners.

 

We also have a snack bar with lots of goodies.

 

The Cubmaster/Pinewood Derby King devised some sort of camera turntable that allowed him to upload 360 degree photographs if each car onto our website. That's new this year but was pretty cool.

 

It's a busy day, but lots and lots of fun.

[Pack212Scouter]

Man....sometimes I yearn for that small pack LOL...

 

This year we had 119 Scout cars and 25 parent/sibling cars. Also ran a race for a pack that didn't have a track available. We did setup on Thursday and then Friday because of an ice storm on Thu. Friday night we started registration at 6-7pm with racing starting at 7:15. We used one track for the parent sibling race and the other for the other Pack during our registration time. Every scout got to run 4 heats and we had a Pack finals of 4 heats for the top 4 of each rank (doing away with that next year I think) All told racing was done for the scouts in about 2 hours. Tear down was complete by 11pm and man was I tired!

[davlafont]

Our pack only had 40 entries: 30 scouts, 10 family. We use an electronic timer and software. Each car enters the track on lane 1, then shifts over to 2 then 3, so every cub sees his car run in three races in a row. Because of the size of the group, we were able to run three heats so every car took 9 runs. The software averages the times to produce results and can parse them in any number of ways.

 

We award first, second, and third for each den, AND Pack overall, AND Family division. We also have judges pick Best Color, Funniest Theme, Most Patriotic, etc. You guessed it... every scout is awarded something. I'm not a big fan of this method, but the kids seem to enjoy it and when called upon to judge I faithfully executed.

 

One lesson I learned for next year is that the software arranges the order of races by the car's number (which we input during registration). The scout's numbers were done in advance based on the roster somehow and started at a low number like 10. To differentiate the family division, we assigned numbers begining with 100 on up. Unfortunety, the software "alphabetizes" the numbers from left to right, not numerically. So Scout car #10 was followed by #100 and #101. All the family cars raced before the second scout did! In the future we will assign family cars numbers beginning with a 9 (90, 900, 901).

[ManyHats]

We only have 2 lanes and do double elimination. I bought a large magnetic board and printed each scout on magnetic inkjet sheets and cut them out. Then I printed and put together the bracket and used magnets to hold it on the board. I didn't run the bracket but them seemed to like the ease of moving them along the bracket.