Pinewood Derby Car Judging

[The Blancmange]

My son has moved on to BS, but I am still helping out the Pack leadership. Therefore, I am certain that I will be tapped as an "impartial" judge for the pinewood derby car design awards. I am asking this question in light of the common guidance that the car should be produced primarily by the scout with assistance from an adult, with the boy having more responsibilty as he gains experience and confidence with the tools over his years in Cubs. Last year, my son in his last year of Webs, made a car that won most patriotic. The only thing I did for him was to make a couple of initial cuts on the table saw and offer some suggestions as he proceeded. The smile on his face when he won that award was priceless.

 

I anticipate that my dilema is going to be judging the absolutely flawless, intricate car submitted by a Tiger Cub, where the boy obviously had little or no hand in construction, versus the car that has some imperfections but is otherwise a nice car produced primarily by the Scout. We use a lot of the common categories like I have seen elsewhere, like best of show, best paint job, funniest, most patriotic, etc. These change from year to year. It feels a little like judging Frank Thomas against Mark McGuire or Sammy Sosa. If the flawless car objectively is the best in show, should it get the award, or should it be docked for "juicing."

 

[AnaMaria]

We include a category called "best boy made" to try and be sure a boy who works hard on his own has a chance at an award. The boy doesn't decide what category his car is entered in, it's left to the judges to determine.

[perdidochas]

I think it's up to you as a judge. My feeling is to go for the obviously boy made car.

[IM_Kathy]

my son's old pack use to have different catagories - "patriotic" "sports" "colorful" etc...

 

when we ran into issues with the winners always being what appeared to be adult made that we got rid of the catagories and changed it to breaking them into levels... so for design tigers competed against tigers, wolf to wolf, bear to bear, and webelos to webelos... made it much more fun.

 

although this did bring in a different factor that we weren't expecting, and that is what are the judges judging? 1 year the judges went with most looked like a car, another went with which looked more difficult to do, and another did a combined with looked good and how difficult it was to do.

 

then the racing we had an award for the fastest tiger, wolf, bear, and webelos... and then had an overall top 3 (obviously 1 of these guys got another award but a lot of times the other 2 top were in that boys same level)

[frankpalazzi]

For the past several years our pack comes up with an award for every car! Every car is given a "most-something" award. If it doesn't fit into any traditional categories, we think of a special one for it. Sure, it takes some extra paper and ink for the certificates, but the boys love it, the parents appreciate it, and there are never any disappointments! Also eliminates the "ego-dad" syndrome too!

[kari_cardi]

We do the same as FrankScout, every car wins a certificate for something, and sometimes that something is hard to find. We still have a Best of Show, though, that can be a problem. I tend to be biased toward originality. Last year we had a car that was built (again) with the help of grandpa who knows the formula for a fast car. We gave the scout Best of Show not for the shape of the car or the fast wheels, but for the completely original handpainted scenes of Cub Scout camping that circled the car. No other car came close to that artistic eye.

 

The year before, we had three cars that were pretty equal in terms of design and adult help. We chose Best of Show by eeny meeny miney moe, no lie.

[SSScout]

All good experience and ideas here.

 

I will offer one bit that is somewhat relavant to car judging:

I have a friend who is an antique car afficianando. He tells this story. He was at a car show and the judging for "Best of Show" came down to two Dusenburgs, virtually identical, he said. To break the tie, the judges drained some coolant from the radiators and measured the amount of RUST in each sample. The car with the least was declared winner.

Least saw dust?

[Mom2Scouts06]

Our pack has an award for Most Scout Friendly (which means Scout did most or all of the work himself..you can usually tell by the horrible or unique paint jobs LOL!)

 

We also do an award for the slowest car that doesnt win any races because they boy usually gets so upset. It is called Most Fuel Efficient. This award is the one most appreciated by parents it seems.

[The Blancmange]

Thanks. Some good ideas here.

[Scoutfish]

We do it a bit differently.

 

We have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for each rank. Then we have overall grand champion.

The cars are also judged as best of show and most creative.

 

We have members of our Co - who do not have kids or relatives in the pack - to be judges.

 

They are told that we want the cares judged based on the kids doing the most work. Usually, it's pretty obvious when a kid doesn't do much work. Especially when they see the car for the first time when it races.

 

Now, we talked once about possibly creating an award for each kid, but then remembered that we are scouts and do not want to push the "Everybody is the best every time" theory. Life is tough. Life is hard.

 

You don't always lose, but that doesn't mean you win too. Sometimes just being part of something bigger than you is the award and reward in itself.

 

At the beginning of the PWD, we tell all the kids and parents too...that the whole point is to get together and have fun. We whoop and holler. We get excited, we can yell and cheer our cars on.

 

We are there to have fun. If you win, it's just a bonus! If you don't win..who cares! You still had fun!

 

And you know what..the boys seem happier than when it was about seeing what trophy or ribbon you got.

[Mrw1]

We always had the BOYS vote on those types of awards as they were less likely to look at perfect workmanship and more at which cars really were most colorful or "coolest" or whatever the prize categories were.

 

That pretty effectively eliminated dad-made cars from the running. We also ran a family race after the boys were done racing so the dad's and sibs could make a car and race without taking away from the boys making their own cars.

[Scoutfish]

We even talked a little bit about having a "Dad Race".

 

You know dads. They gotta "help" jr have the best car, rigfht?

 

So we talked about maybe the dad can pay $15.00 to enter their own competition. It's for braging rights only - no trophy.

 

100% of the entry fee goes to the pack as a donation. Maybe even help pay for next years PWD trophies.

[denleader09]

Scoutfish, we do an "Outlaw" race in which parents and siblings can enter. There are no rules about weight or length.

 

This is actually one of the best races during the derby. One year a little 5 year old who obviously did a lot of work herself on it got 2nd or 3rd place over all the souped up dad ones. lol! We don't charge anything to enter the race, but you do have to provide your own derby car. It is great fun and I highly recommend doing it.

[BartHumphries]

I agree with people, the best way is to have both a boy race and a parent race. Let the parents go crazy and wild with their own cars and mandate that they can build their own cars while their kids/relatives/whatever watch, but that they can't help the boys at all.

 

That being said, sometimes young boys really are all that good -- sometimes they started making pinewood derby cars at 5 with their parents "help" and at the ripe old age of 7 or 8 they've had years of practice at it and have made a dozen cars already. I used to dig into my piggy bank and buy three kits when I was making a car, just so I could totally screw up on the first car, then fine tune it for the last car. I was really clumsy when I was young, so totally flubbing on at least one car was pretty much par for the course for me. Other boys in the troop were much more coordinated, but my method at least let me have a single entry into the race when all was said and done instead of watching from the sidelines.

[packsaddle]

maybe some more here...