Pack 221 held their annual Pinewood Derby this past Monday in the School Gym. It was awesome. The Pioneer District Order of the Arrow helped out as they have for the past three years. One of the OA Advisors used his Wood Badge ticket to bring back the District Race to help raise funds for a new Teepee. The first year we had Pinewood, we used a very old track that was horribly broken. It ran very late. This year, it was about 60 or so minutes of pure racing fun.
As any good Cubmaster will repeat “Do your Best” & Be Prepared. That being the case I downloaded a lot of clean jokes that I could tell in front of 50 Cubscouts and not get shot by the Parents. I got a lot of groans instead. Which I loved.
We also had our check-in right before the whole event. That was different from the past years, but it was quick and effective. I suspect we will do that again. It got people to the race on time and basically ready. Yes, we had to add weight to many cars, but we had weight and tape.
Our Committee Chair and Outings Chair handled it all. It really pays to have a group of people who are there helping. That’s how Brown Worked for US! I got there early as well and helped setup and steer people this way and that. The Cubmaster is really the traffic cop and Chief Information Officer.
During some of the slow times and along with the start/end of the race, I made it a point to talk about our Crossover on March 17th. I explained what Crossover is and what the Webelos II will be doing. I explained it’s our Pack Overnighter and we would have a lot of fun along with sleeping in Box cars.
One thing that we did this year, more so actually, was to hand out a lot of certificates. Using the word template I printed off 17 certificates. With 45 Scouts it should cover a lot of them. We did award 1,2,3rd overall along with each Den. We also handed out the Pinewood Derby Segement. My point in doing all of this is that every Scout would get something.
Did everyone have fun. Yes. The boys did. The Parents did too. We did have a few boys get upset about how some races came out and that their car was raced backwards. But, we worked to resolve it as best we could.
Our Pack also has an Open and Siblings section. They all race together, but are counted seperately. We do not give them awards, but racing is the best reward overall. We did have one family that did their cars as a family project. I am happy to say that they had a lot of fun. The sister generally beats her brother. This time he got the Fastest Car for the track ever. Meaning, that on this track that is used in many many packs for many many years, he had the fastest. Pretty good if I say so. His sister ran a large gold fish, his mom ran a large foot (she had surgery on it) and he ran a souped up tin can.
It was a good year. It was quick and we were out with not a lot of techincal issues that caused delay. Which is wonderful.
Thanks Pioneer District Order of the Arrow! (I will state that during the set-up and between jokes I pointed out what the OA is and what they do. I also explained that they are Boy Scouts within a Troop that are elected to the OA by their friends. I figured that since the OA was there helping us, that I would put in a plug for them. Many of our Scout Leaders in the Pack are OA and even Vigil.)
