Cubmaster cheating in pinewood, really????

[mashmaster]

Pinewood check in tonight and the cubmaster who is an Eagle scout skirts the rules with his kids. It makes me so mad that people like this exist. What a nice lesson to teach your kid.

[RememberSchiff]

A fair Pinewood Derby? Your chances of seeing a unicorn on a hike are better,

[packsaddle]

Get an objective third-party judge. Instruct them to go strictly by the rules and then back them up when they do their job. I've confronted this in the past, thankfully not with a Cubmaster.

[SSScout]

Agree with Pack. PWD should be managed by a separate party. Another Scout Troop, a Commissioner, CO Pastor, it should have a "official" check in, weigh in, hold area, track managers, etc. Ideally the CM and such should NOT be involved, except peripherally.

"Well, it doesn't matter here" is not an acceptable rationale.

Take the CM aside , with some others, not in public, and ask him about the appearance of things, not so much accusations of cheating (perish the thought).

[RememberSchiff]

If we need an objective, third-party judge to run any event in scouting, let's just either remove "Trustworthy" right now or bring back real Unit Commissioner of old who policed units.

[tonkatim]

We used to have a couple of cars with the fixed axles. They come 2-3 feet ahead of the rest. Same cars every year.

 

I removed the trophies from the mix. Slowly make it a non-competitive event. Put a sticker dot on the heats winning car and the car with the most dots at the end is the car with the most dots at the end. Really play down the winning aspect.

 

You know that you are on to them and they know you are on to them. Remember that their Cubs might need some extra help learning right from wrong as they won't learn it at home. Do not confront anyone or you are putting as much emphasis on the competitive portion of the event as they are.

 

That being said, I despise the pinewood derby and do not believe that what it has become, belongs anywhere near the Cub Scout program.

[packsaddle]

While I sympathize with the lament, ".... let's just either remove "Trustworthy" ...." we can also be realistic. Yes, we should expect a SM to meet the ideals of scouting and if he doesn't we should call him on it. But dads who are not registered scouters aren't necessarily bound by anything more than an ethical code that we hope everyone follows: "No Cheating", or something like that. In the back of our minds we know that the 'code' wouldn't be there in the first place if people DIDN'T cheat. So it's going to happen. It's inevitable. And yes, a SM, Scout Law or not, is still just as human as the rest of us and susceptible to the temptation. It is our duty to bring him back to where he should be. Short of that we fail him and ourselves alike.

It's just sometimes more effective to have a third party make the call.

[mashmaster]

Thanks everyone, We let his boys race but we did talk privately to the dad and told him our concerns. He didn't agree with us but we didn't want the boys to pay the penalty. They ended up not winning the races. Next year I think we may try to have a third party control the check in and race.

 

It is always the parents....

[CalicoPenn]

Agreed - it's always the parents. I can't count how many times parents have gotten themselves into a snit over what they insist is other people cheating. Most of the time, the biggest problem parents are the ones accusing others of cheating. Think it's bad at the Pack level? It's much worse at the District level. Most of the time, it's just a simple disagreement over the "rules" though sometimes its the accusers being ultra-competitive parents. Other times its just someone complaining about something perfectly acceptable that they hadn't thought of that might give the other car an advantage. We don't even know what the "cheating" this Cubmaster has allegeldy done, and we're quick to accept that he was cheating requiring the use of a third party check in person. Don't ever invite me to be the third person because I will always...always...give the benefit of the doubt to the boy and his car (even if Dad built it all by himself) and let him race it. I've seen those accusations tear apart dens and friendships. I've seen families drop out of Scouting after being accused of cheating, or not being satisfied after they've complained about cheating. Really, it's just not worth it.

 

When checking in, the only rules that we ever enforced was a rule for weight (all cars could weigh up to so much and no more - and that's usually easily adjustable at race time) and wheel base and that's just to make sure the car fits on the track. Every thing else is just gobble-gobble-gobble.

 

The bottom line is this - the boys don't care. They don't care about weight, they don't care about restrictions, they don't care about the trophies - they just want to see the cars race down the track and they want to see the cars finish - the boys I've seen that have been most upset during a pinewood derby aren't the ones that lose but the ones whose car doesn't make it all the way down the track - those boys can be downright inconsolable. And what happens in a well run Pack? 5 dads (cause it usually is the dads) grab that car, huddle in the corner, figure out what made it stop - fix it - and let the boy race it again. Maybe it takes being able to step back from it to see it but I've found that the boys that are the happiest aren't the ones that "won" but are the ones that raced against their buddies after the official races (our pack always kept the track up for as long as we could after the races so that people could just run their cars down the track - it was the one night of the year that the schools janitor wouldn't be hovering around the exit at 8:45 to make sure every one was out by 9:00). Win or lose - for them it was about the fun and comparing their cars with those of their friends. Remember what it was like in unstructured free play? Sure, you might play some "sandlot" baseball but no one really seriously kept score. The boys aren't going to remember 3 months from now who took first, second or third place - they're going to remember their car, which they may have built with Dad, Mom, Grandpa, Grandma, Big Brother or Big Sister racing down that track and crossing the finish line.

 

It's a real shame that we, as adults, can't remember what that's like.

[Basementdweller]

Pinewood check in tonight and the cubmaster who is an Eagle scout skirts the rules with his kids. It makes me so mad that people like this exist. What a nice lesson to teach your kid.

 

 

 

yawn

 

Your gonna have to be more specific than just a general, he is a cheater.

[mashmaster]

 

The bottom line is this - the boys don't care. They don't care about weight, they don't care about restrictions, they don't care about the trophies - they just want to see the cars race down the track and they want to see the cars finish - the boys I've seen that have been most upset during a pinewood derby aren't the ones that lose but the ones whose car doesn't make it all the way down the track - those boys can be downright inconsolable. And what happens in a well run Pack? 5 dads (cause it usually is the dads) grab that car, huddle in the corner, figure out what made it stop - fix it - and let the boy race it again. Maybe it takes being able to step back from it to see it but I've found that the boys that are the happiest aren't the ones that "won" but are the ones that raced against their buddies after the official races (our pack always kept the track up for as long as we could after the races so that people could just run their cars down the track - it was the one night of the year that the schools janitor wouldn't be hovering around the exit at 8:45 to make sure every one was out by 9:00). Win or lose - for them it was about the fun and comparing their cars with those of their friends. Remember what it was like in unstructured free play? Sure, you might play some "sandlot" baseball but no one really seriously kept score. The boys aren't going to remember 3 months from now who took first, second or third place - they're going to remember their car, which they may have built with Dad, Mom, Grandpa, Grandma, Big Brother or Big Sister racing down that track and crossing the finish line.

 

 

I agree, I ended up spending my night fixing that needed fixing, either just adding weight to get them up to the wieght limit, reducing weight, or helping the boys reset their wheels. I did it with the boys so that they got the experience about what was wrong and how we can fix it. We do a pre-run of each car the night before to ensure it will finish. If they want to change their car, they can work with any of the experts that night to get it up to where they want it.

 

It is the best feeling seeing them light up when their car that didn't make it across the line or is just plain slow, gets fixed by them that night.