Random Mystery Race Prizes

Discussions on race planning, preparations and how to run a "fair" and fun race.
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drathbun
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Random Mystery Race Prizes

Post by drathbun »

We did something new this year that we had a lot of fun with. To prep I bought 10 Hot Wheel cars and wrapped them up. We run our races in den brackets, to 5 races (Tigers, Wolves...) make up our preliminary heats. What I did was arrange with the computer guy to pick some random races, two from each den group. He had some red and blue "police" lights, and he would turn those lights on as the random mystery races were about to start. After the first one, I explained to the boys that this was a "Random Mystery Race" and that someone would win a prize. To find out who, I had another den leader roaming the room, and he would stop where he was and find the closest leader, and they would draw a card. The card had a number 1, 2, 3, or 4 on it. Whichever car came in that place won the random mystery race prize and got to pick a wrapped Hot Wheel!

It was a lot of fun. I overheard one boy say (when a "3" was drawn) something like, "I've never rooted for my car to be slow before, but I think I'm too fast to win..." We had mostly 2's, 3's, and 4's drawn, with only a single 1 drawn in our 10 random mystery races. It was a cool way to add excitement because I would pretend that I didn't know the lights were going off behind me, and make the boys scream and yell, "Lights are on!" and they really got into it. The boys who came in 3rd or 4th got to have fun even if their car wasn't performing well.

We'll definitely plan to do the same thing again next year, and we might even do it at the district race too. I just thought I would share the concept with the rest of y'all here as well. You wouldn't have to use lights, you could have a flag that gets raised, or any sort of signal. I think it would be best to have whatever activity going on behind the MC though, so the boys have to watch for the signal and start yelling when it's up.

I would also be interested to see if anyone else has done something like this, or if I've managed to come up with something new. :)
BallBoy
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Re: Random Mystery Race Prizes

Post by BallBoy »

I read your post here yesterday and liked the idea. Since I had a race lined up for last night I made a quick trip to pick up some Hot Wheels cars before the race. Though my presentation didn't have the production value of what you described and the heats were strategically selected rather than picked at random, the boys sure seemed to like it.

During the first few heats I payed attention to which cars were slow and looked at the faces of the boys to see who was going to have a bad night. I waited for one of boys' names to come up again and announced that this heat would be a '4th place winner' heat, where the 4th place car won one of the prizes. Parents and cubs alike cheered the 4th place winner that heat. I did 3rd and 2nd place winners later in the race, though it's harder to predict a 2nd or 3rd place showing.

As it turned out the boy that was the 4th place winner was the only boy that came in 4th place every heat. So, he at least won something that night and I noticed him having fun racing his Hot Wheels car around the gym floor after the race.
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drathbun
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Re: Random Mystery Race Prizes

Post by drathbun »

One thing we discovered with Hot Wheels was as they got passed out, the boys started playing with them. Ideally we want them to focus on the race, so I think next year I am going to suggest to our planning committee that instead of cars we pass out gift certificates or monopoly money that can be used at the concession stand.
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