CM4045

tdyer56 thanks for the comments. Our Pack came up with a double elimination format that incorporated a round-robin playoff for the last 6 Scouts. We used this recently at our Raingutter Regatta and it worked great. After I initially posted this topic I searched the Internet extensively for PWD info and found many procedures including the one you mentioned. Quite frankly (and nothing personal) I found what I saw to be rather disturbing. I believe that parents have made the PWD extremely over-complicated and have taken the PWD out of the hands of the Scouts. After all, it is a given that the younger Scouts need a fair amount of assistance in making their cars, so whether they win or lose is not necessarily attributable to the Scout. How well the wheels are put on and where the weight is added to the cars are what make the difference - most Scouts won't get those right without parental assistance. So right off the bat the race may not be fair when considering how much parental assistance one Scout recieves versus another. While I commend the efforts to make the competition fair my observation since I have been involved in Scouting the last 3 years is this: The Scouts are only moderately interested in winning. For them The participation and experience of making the cars (and boats and space derby ships) is far more important. Whether or not our double elimination format is the fairest method (which it is not) is not the point. The method is reasonbly fair and the Scouts do not know that it could or could not be more fair (ref. parental assistance comments above). In our Pack we stress "Do your best" and good sportsmanship. I hope that all Packs make these the most important aspects of the competition! If anyone would like a copy of our double elimination/round-robin format, please e-mail me at grhoppen@hotmail.com.

Does anyone have a written procedure for using numbers and 3 cans for running a double elimination tournament for Pinewood Derby and Raingutter Regatta? We tried it last year and it didn't work out very well. I have set up a double elimination bracket for 64, but it won't work very well if you have odd numbers of entries, like 33 or 48.