Which scoring method

[DerbyAddict]

Hello all, been lurking for a while but with race day drawing near, it is time to start asking questions. First a little background -
My wife and I, along with a couple of other dedicated people, revived our Cub Pack 3 years ago and ran our first PWD. We had a 2 lane wooden track that was not very good (thank goodness for sandpaper and painters tape!). We had 16 boys and ran a double elim. I saw the error of our ways after the first boy was knocked out after just two races.

Last year we borrowed a 2 ln alum track. We had 24 boys and with the "Young and Pope" chart generator the boys ran 16 races each (yes, 192 races). It was a little hectic but the boys (and a lot of the parents) had a blast! Even the ones who only won a couple of races went away smiling because they raced "so many times".

This year, the boys raised enough money to buy a 3 ln alum track with an electronic timer. I threw in the money for GPRM and hope to run about 36 boys through 16 or 18 races each.

My dilemna involves the scoring method to use. We run all the boys together in one big group. Last year we kept track of the winners and the person winning the most races was the champion. Even though not all boys raced each other, this seemed to work last year. I then thought of some different ways this would be a problem so I thought of using avg time, discarding the worst time. I can think of a couple of problems with this also but it seems to be the fairest. The biggest issue is if there is a problem with the electronics we would need to fall back to the most wins method which could get messy (since we have adults involved, the kids probably won't care a bit they just want to race). I could use some advice from the learned group that is assembled here that I can bring to my PWD committee.

I am hoping to get a very good system down pat for future racing. My oldest is a Bear this year and my youngest starts as a Tiger in 2 years so I will be involved for quite a few years to come.

Thanks for any insight.

[Stan Pope]

You should have a "plan B" that can run in the face of technology failure. Uncharted multiple elimination is good for that.

[gpraceman]

You should have a "plan B" that can run in the face of technology failure.

You could always generate the PPN schedules ahead of time, using varying number of racers, and print them out. Then you would have a pencil and paper backup and would score by points.