Pinewood derby ideas

[83Eagle]

Here is the scenario for our pinewood derby. For the purposes of this question, assume that these parameters cannot be changed:

 

-Two lane track

-Win/loss electronic timer (no clock times)

-Heats are run by den to determine 1-3 den winners

-Den winners advance to a pack championship heat.

 

1. Goal: Increase the # of times cars can run. We have historically run a double-elimination race. This is easy to manage but it is disappointing for the boys when they run twice and are out. I would like to find a way to have the boys run a certain number of times--say, 5 races for each car--then find a way to shift the focus from "eliminated" to "won." In other words, "You'll all race 5 times, and the cars with the most wins will be the winners." If we have cars with the same # of wins we'd do some sort of runoff. But.....lots of problems I can see. Odd # of cars? And what if we have the same # of cars with win/loss records after the number of heats.

 

Any ideas to accomplish my goal of increasing the # of times cars can run?

 

2. Goal #2. Find a way to make the results more transparent to the audience. Assume that we have no derby software or projection system. Trying to think of a big chart, or board, or...something.

 

Any ideas?

[5yearscouter]

I think I just deleted the link I had to a pinewood derby score sheet to have racers race against each other scout, and in each lane.

 

It's a bit longer if you have a 2 lane track, we have a 4 lane track with a brain that gives 1st thru 4th place.

 

if you have 8 boys in a den

to have everyone race against every other boy, you'd need quite a few races.

car 1 against everyone: 12,13, 14,15,16,17,18

car 2 against all except above(cause car 2 already raced against car 1 above):23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28

car 3 against all except above: 34, 35, 36, 37, 38

car 4 against all except above: 45, 64, 47, 84

car 5 56, 57, 58

car 6 67,68

car 7 78

car 8 has already raced against everyone else.

[check that I have everyone matched up against everyone else]

 

mix them up in some semblance of order so kids aren't racing back to back

and aren't sitting out too long at a time.

smaller number of cars in a den, stop on the row for how many cars.

 

Remember to have them switch lanes in case one lane is faster than the other lane.

give everyone a point for their placement

1= first, 2=second place, non-finish =3

lowest score wins.

put it on a spreadsheet, put it on an overhead projector borrowed from the school, or that hooks to a pc

and put it on the wall.

 

 

alternatively some packs pass out tickets, if there are 8 scouts in a den, each scout gets 1 ticket.

they pay 1 ticket to race one time (then you switch lanes) winner gets a ticket. scouts get to choose who to race with each time on their own, so they might race someone multiple times but eventually they'll probably race everyone in the den especially if you tell them that they should do so.

 

after a while you'll get down to only a few scouts having tickets, and then you give placements based on who has the most tickets left.

or you give out red tickets to start, and if you win you earn a blue ticket. once everyone is out of red tickets, you have a good idea of winners based on who has the most tickets at this point.

 

[ScoutNut]

http://www.stanpope.net/ppngen.html

 

Use the above race generator.

 

Or this one

 

http://www.wtrfrd.com/pack339/339stern.htm

 

It is harder to work out with only 2 lanes, but it is possible. Also with only 2 lanes with every boy racing every other boy ties should be minimal.

 

We do not worry about making the results transparent. The winner for each race is announced and applauded. At the end of the night the top 3 (we do the entire Pack, not by den)are announced, and they do a final race for position. We don't stress winning. We stress having fun racing. That is why we stay low-tech, and low-key.

[ScoutNut]

Also keep in mind that with only 2 lanes, you almost have to have every boy race every other boy because it will be very obvious if Jimmy never Races Johnny, but you call Johnny the winner.

 

With 7 boys in a den, each boy will race 6 times, for a total of 21 races. The plus side is that the races should go fast.

 

[83Eagle]

I think having every boy race against every other boy is ideal but impractical with larger dens. With a 9-boy den you're looking at 72 races. But you could do it for dens of 5.

 

For larger dens both of the other methods seem to do about the same thing--mix up the cars in different lanes and assign points for win vs. loss. However there are problems that I see

 

-The winning car might not have run against any of the next-highest placing cars. So it seems like there should be some sort of a run off before 1-3 places are determined.

 

-In theory there may be a large # of cars with identical scores.

 

[packsaddle]

When I was CM we always had a great time at PWD. The pack wasn't huge, around 30 contestants, and we ran each age class separately - double elimination - and staggered through the day. Each 'heat' involved three races in which the best two out of three was the winner. The loser went to the other bracket to go through elimination again. This insured that every car ran at least 6 times. Then after the winners were decided for each age group, we did it all again with ANYONE who wanted to race in the 'All Pack' competition, usually just the winning cars but sometimes the others would 'fine tune' it and try again. We used a two-lane home-made track with Boy Scouts (two of them) judging the finish line. At the same time, the moms and sisters would sell cookies and hot dogs all day with the funds going to the pack. I never fielded an angry parent. There were disappointed boys but most of the time, after seeing the competition, they vowed to try harder the following year.

One of the 'hits' was having a parallel competition for the best design (usually the weirdest), also judged by Boy Scouts. Some of the boys didn't even think about winning on the track and instead turned their creative skills to the design.

 

We put all the brackets onto a really big flip chart with a page for each age class. We gave a 'bye' to the odd car, initially determined by pulling a name out of a jar. The car in the 'bye' bracket would run three times to insure that every car ran the same number of times and the boy was allowed to take someone's non-competing car as an opponent. We switched lanes in the first two runs and flipped a coin for the third lane choice.

After everything was done, before the track was taken down, we let the boys just race their cars against anyone they wanted, with extra weight, less weight, wheels missing, pretty much anything goes.

 

To me PWD was one of the highlights of the year. Not just the race itself but also all of the preparation, including the anticipation as the race neared. We had a couple of weekend 'tune ups' and weigh-ins and this was a chance for the dads to show off their tools, swap tips on speed with all the boys (with the caveat that they had to share) and the single moms got to exploit all those testosterone-charged tools and that expertise for their sons as well. Those nights were social events for the boys but also the families. It was exhausting for me but it was a heck of a lot of fun.

I really miss the cubs.

(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[Oak Tree]

"With a 9-boy den you're looking at 72 races."

 

No, only 36 races. That could still go pretty quickly - maybe a half-hour.

[5yearscouter]

I really prefer to race each boy against every other boy in the den.

the formula for how many races you need for a 2 lane track is number in den = d

d-1+ d-2 + d-3 .... etc til you get to 1

 

so for 9 boys in a den d = 9

number of races = 8 +7+6+5+4+3+2+1=36

in a double elimination, you'll usually have close to that number and you don't have each fast car race against every other fast car, and boys only race a couple times and leads to a LOT of disappointment.

 

if you have really large dens like over 10 the first question is why so large? the next suggestion is to break them in half, so you have 5 boys race against each other( in 4+3+2+1 races = 10 races, instead of 9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1= 45 races) to determine the top racers and then have the top in each group race against each other. the worries for that is that the 5 racers in one group could all be faster than the 5 racers in the other group, but you gotta make a few changes to force the racing to fit into the amount of time you have.

 

 

[JoeBob]

With a plywood two-lane track, there is a very real chance that one lane is faster the other. So it becomes critical that every race is run twice in different lanes:

Racer A in Lane 1 vs. Racer B in Lane 2

Racer B in Lane 1 vs. Racer A in Lane 2

or your results will be invalid.

 

Add a loser's bracket, and every car must race four times.

 

I don't have a suggestion for what happens when the cars split races - ie Racer A wins in Lane one and Racer B wins in Lane one...

[packsaddle]

JoeBob, in the case of the split, you run them again and again until someone wins more times out of an equal number of races in each lane.

Alternatively, you can add a new bracket and advance them both, waiting until the end to do all the repeats.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[SeattlePioneer]

Personally, I'm not a big Pinewood Derby fan. I think parents get over involved and the races are commonly overproduced and get in the way of boys having fun.

 

One thing I'm planning to do this year is set up our Pinewood Derby track the day the kits are handed out.

 

Boys would put their names on the bottom of their car and assemble it with any help needed from parents. The boys would then organize their own races with boys in their den.

 

I may print up Pinewood Derby certificates the boys can put their names on. The winner of each two Scout match race would get a sticker to put on their certificate so they would be a recongized "winner" of their race.

 

I'm guessing many of the boys would have as much fun at that activity as at a more formal race --- Tiger Cubs and Wolves especially.

[83Eagle]

I'm guessing many of the boys would have as much fun at that activity as at a more formal race --- Tiger Cubs and Wolves especially.

 

I'm going to bet that you will be surprised that kids will miss the competition. We switched our other two Derbies (space & raingutter) from "for fun" to competitive, and we doubled our participation and had much more excitement. Before it was "why bother?" Yes, I know why, but the bottom line is kids like to compete.

 

And even if it's just "for fun," they're keeping score anyway, regarding who beats who. It's human nature.

[83Eagle]

Two things.

 

1. After researching into methods and links mentioned above, I came across a macro-enabled spreadsheet to do a generator of the young & pope/PPN that I liked better than the ones mentioned. It's very intuitive and it lets you set up races based on # of cars, tracks, and heats easily.

 

This will accomplish what we want to do, which is to allow each car to race an equal number of times so it is more interesting, and then to base the winner off # of wins rather than through elimination. I think it will also eliminate a bit of the excitement that comes with the final race between the first and second place cars in the elimination method, so that's the only downside I see.

 

I tried this spreadsheet on a 10-car heat running 4 times with the practice scenario that the lower numbered car would always be faster (i.e., beat out a higher numbered car). This generator always put the fastest car in the #1 position or tied for #1. In the second and third place ranking it occasionally moved up the #4 car and dropped down the #3 car. But this could happen in double elimination as well.

 

All in all, I think this is a good method and since it is "computer scored" it will look better to the crowd than the usual fiddling we did with tick mark sheets for our double elimination.

 

The file is at: http://members.cox.net/pinehead/software.html

http://members.cox.net/pinehead/ppnxls.zip.

 

2. I would like to create some tall signs, like you see in convention halls, to clearly deliniate areas of the race--check in, garage, lube station, etc. Something 6 feet tall that's easy to see. Any ideas out there? I'm thinking a tall pole or even closet rod zip tied to a table leg with a sign tacked to the top might work...

[packsaddle]

We just used yellow rope strung between portable home-made stanchions. It worked just fine. But keep in mind that ours was a smaller pack and that not all of the boys were there at the same time.

[5yearscouter]

We just make large folded over signs to stick on tables to designate check in

cars placed on table by den

judge's table

and pit area

 

then we have some checkered flag that we rope off the area that people can't enter without permission.

 

and the webelos 2's sell pizza and sodas to the families while they watch the race as a fundraiser for their first year of going to scout camp.