A First Pinewood Derby

Some weeks ago, I posted a message about our Pinewood Derby to the list and
received a great response from Pinewood Scouters. We held our event on
Wednesday night and it was GREAT!

To give you a little background, we are an English cub pack and Pinewood
Derbies are not a tradition in England like they are in the U.S. In fact,
until I subscribed to this list I didn't even know such a thing existed.
Thus, when I decided to run a derby in our pack it was something of a risk.
With the advice and assistance of American scouters, notably our friends of
Pack 165, Cary, North Carolina, I built a track, found a supplier of wheels,
found some sponsors willing to donate prizes (see our web page for all the
details), and then crossed my fingers hoping that the boys would develop the
enthusiasm I had.

Before Easter we had two pack meetings devoted to building and testing the
cars. The boys were then encouraged to "improve" their vehicles over the
Easter break before the Big Night on Wednesday.

On Wednesday night, I was nervous, hoping that a reasonable number of boys
would (remember to) bring their cars. I wished for a multiple of 7 so that I
could use the Perfect 7 chart (for three lane tracks) that I had found on
Stan Pope's excellent web pages (http://members.aol.com/StanDCmr/). My wife
and younger son (a Beaver, the English version of Tiger Cubs) came to add
support and help judge the "Best Looking Car". So then the cars arrived,
some boys had worked in 2's and 3's but everyone had a car to race (hooray!).
I counted up the cars, 20 cub cars! My beaver son has brought a car as well
so I had three groups of 7, Wonderful!

Then there were the cars themselves. Some of the boys had spent a lot of
time decorating their cars and there were some imaginative designs. I had
some example photos from Jim Peterson in Wisconsin (thanks, Jim), and these
gave the boys some ideas, but they had obviously thought about their work
themselves.

The racing went well, the three groups raced in turn and I awarded points for
first, second and third in each race (3,2,1 points). Fortunately all the
races were easy to call, no finish was closer than about a car length. The
groups produced three 3-win cars which raced in a three-way round robin to
find the grand champion. This was close with one car winning one race and
another winning two. So we found our Champion. The winning boy was one of
the quieter members of the pack who had, it seems, spent a lot of time
thinking about building a fast car. Remember, we don't have all the Hint and
Tips that are taken for granted in the U.S. The top three drivers then
received their prizes, donated by the local Jaguar dealership of baseball
caps and Jaguar pencil boxes.

Finally, we chose the top three "Best Looking Cars". This was not too hard,
the best three, especially the winner, were quite clear. The winning vehicle
was a "Tango" truck (semi-trailer, in american?). "Tango" is an
orange-flavoured soft drink in the style of 7-Up. I was pleased to see that
the winning driver was one of the younger, less athletic, boys in the pack
who has been working very hard on his badgework lately. More prizes of caps,
boxes, and Formula 1 posters. All competitors left with a prize, if only a
Land Rover key fob or a Lotus balloon (or four!).

All in all I am excited and delighted with the success of the evening.
Everything went according to plan and all the boys had a great night. We
will certainly be having another event next year and I'm sure it will become
a regular and popular part of our calendar.

Thanks again to all of you who helped make this possible. In a week or so I
hope to put some photos from the event on our web pages so you can all see
what an English Pinewood Derby looks like!

Yours in Scouting

Steve

Steve Plater
Cub Scout Leader
Kotick Cubs
Cottingham
East Yorkshire
England
http://users.aol.com/cubskotick

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