First time PWD Chair
Posted: Fri Dec 03, 2010 1:32 pm
Hi all. So glad to find this forum - I've already learned a ton! However, the Cubmaster has appointed me as chair for our PWD next month and I'm trying to figure out a few things.
Some quick background: we're a new pack as of Fall of last year. We threw together a Pinewood Derby earlier this year, and it was a chaotic affair. We did random, single-elimination by den, and then had the den winners race for finals. As I'm sure you would expect, there were tears and grumbling by the older boys that slower cars got to go to district. To make matters even worse, we have an old, 2-lane track, with one obviously slower lane (we did have an electronic finish, but no timer). We ran best out of 3 races, so when the cars were close, whoever won the coinflip won the race. We are a small pack (only about 30 total), so it was mercifully short, but still not a great experience.
So, I've been tasked with "fixing things." I'd love to buy a new track, but with our current finances, we can't make that work right now (I'm definitely going to try to for next year!). So, I'm looking at a perfect-N method, using either spreadsheets or (if I can get the PC to approve it) GPRM. However, I'm concerned about selling the anti-climatic nature of the non-elimination format to the other adult leaders and parents. When I used the spreadsheet to simulate a race, it's just car A vs car B over and over and then "ta-da!" here are the winnners, and it's a little hard for observers to understand how it works (maybe it's better with GPRM, but it was hard to tell with the demo having a limit of 5 entries).
Now, our pack has grown a bit this year (we're up to about 40) and have between 7 and 11 scouts in each Den (we only have one Web 2, so we're lumping him in with the Web 1's). I was thinking of going with a Den-by-den format, awarding 1-2-3 of each den, then grabbing the top 3 of each den and racing them off in a combined DE to determine the top 4 to go to district. After reading some other things here, I see several comments that instead of DE, another Perfect-N would be a better way to go, but again I'm worried about the lack of any "championship race." Maybe it's my old school sports background that makes me think there needs to be a mano-y-mano fight to the finish.
The other option I was considering is lumping the entire pack together into one giant schedule. Everyone would race each other and I'll determine den winners based on total score, but I was worried that a) there would be too much time between a given scout's races and b) an unlucky draw could have a Tiger matched up against older scouts every time. This also has the problem of making it even harder for observers to figure out where they stand.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions/feedback!
Some quick background: we're a new pack as of Fall of last year. We threw together a Pinewood Derby earlier this year, and it was a chaotic affair. We did random, single-elimination by den, and then had the den winners race for finals. As I'm sure you would expect, there were tears and grumbling by the older boys that slower cars got to go to district. To make matters even worse, we have an old, 2-lane track, with one obviously slower lane (we did have an electronic finish, but no timer). We ran best out of 3 races, so when the cars were close, whoever won the coinflip won the race. We are a small pack (only about 30 total), so it was mercifully short, but still not a great experience.
So, I've been tasked with "fixing things." I'd love to buy a new track, but with our current finances, we can't make that work right now (I'm definitely going to try to for next year!). So, I'm looking at a perfect-N method, using either spreadsheets or (if I can get the PC to approve it) GPRM. However, I'm concerned about selling the anti-climatic nature of the non-elimination format to the other adult leaders and parents. When I used the spreadsheet to simulate a race, it's just car A vs car B over and over and then "ta-da!" here are the winnners, and it's a little hard for observers to understand how it works (maybe it's better with GPRM, but it was hard to tell with the demo having a limit of 5 entries).
Now, our pack has grown a bit this year (we're up to about 40) and have between 7 and 11 scouts in each Den (we only have one Web 2, so we're lumping him in with the Web 1's). I was thinking of going with a Den-by-den format, awarding 1-2-3 of each den, then grabbing the top 3 of each den and racing them off in a combined DE to determine the top 4 to go to district. After reading some other things here, I see several comments that instead of DE, another Perfect-N would be a better way to go, but again I'm worried about the lack of any "championship race." Maybe it's my old school sports background that makes me think there needs to be a mano-y-mano fight to the finish.
The other option I was considering is lumping the entire pack together into one giant schedule. Everyone would race each other and I'll determine den winners based on total score, but I was worried that a) there would be too much time between a given scout's races and b) an unlucky draw could have a Tiger matched up against older scouts every time. This also has the problem of making it even harder for observers to figure out where they stand.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions/feedback!