Top overover in District determination

[TurtlePowered]

In our district all scouts in the same rank compete for top of rank, then top of each rank face off. I was thinking that perhaps the top 2 or 3 from each rank should be represented. What are your packs doing?

[Stan Pope]

If you are giving one "King of the Hill" trophy as the "grand champion", then you are better off advancing just one per grade. One such trophy is really sufficient, since all finals participants already have a trophy from the grade races.

You might look at the "grand championship" as icing on the cake that the racers earned a chance at by winning their grade competition.

If you are giving more than one trophy in the finals, then you have to look at how the trophy is interpreted.

If the 2nd place trophy is interpreted as "the second fastest of the finalists", then you are okay in just racing one finalist from each grade. If the 2nd place trophy is interpreted as "the second fastest car in the pack," then you should advance multiple Scouts from each rank.

A problem with advancing multiple Scouts per grade is that it may expose the accuracy (or lack thereof) of your racing methods. It would be a bit disconcerting for the 3rd place car from the Wolf grade competition to win the Grand Championship in the finals. If your grade competitions were simple Stearns charts, you might well get this kind of result. Such results would be less frequent from a more accurate method, such as a compound PPN-PN or Stearns-PN grade race, where the first stage of racing acknowledges the lack of precisioin and is used to narrow the field to a smaller group which has a high probability of containing the N fastest cars and the second stage is a higher precision race to rank the finalists.

[Cory]

In our district all scouts in the same rank compete for top of rank, then top of each rank face off. I was thinking that perhaps the top 2 or 3 from each rank should be represented. What are your packs doing?

For the last several years, our District has advanced two per Rank to the overall finals.

In our Pack, we advance two per Den to the Rank finals. (We don't have a Pack level finals).

I like advancing more kids. With fewer kids in a chart, you figure out pretty quickly what the pecking order is, well before the chart is finished. With 10 kids, 2 in each rank, it takes longer, and you also have time to pre-identify certain pivotal heats to which to look forward.

A problem with advancing multiple Scouts per grade is that it may expose the accuracy (or lack thereof) of your racing methods. It would be a bit disconcerting for the 3rd place car from the Wolf grade competition to win the Grand Championship in the finals.

I've seen this sort of thing happen a number of times at our Pack derbies -- 2nd place in a Den would win the Rank. Unless you're using CPN charts or something similar, all it takes is a crucial unlucky lane assignment to cause a faster car to finish 2nd. Plus there are factors such as lube break-in, bad staging, etc. which play a part.

We use CPN in the Rank finals, and usually PN or PPN in the Den races.

[TurtlePowered]

Our pack (and district) does time averaging over all lanes to determine winners. At the district races, since each rank races on a different track, all winners run on the same track and do another time averaging. I believe multiple trophies are given out but I don't recall if all four participants in the finals got trophies.

[Da Graphite Kid]

TurtlePowered,
In our Pack, we also determine the fastest Scouts in each rank and than race them against each other for top honors. Our old and new District do likewise. The boys that are advanced from Pack to District level are done so by how they did within their rank and not how they did in a Race of Champions for the Pack.

I believe that the number of Scouts that are advanced from one level to the next - be it rank to Pack or Pack to District - should be determined by the number of trophies/awards that will be given for the fastest cars. If you are giving trophies for the three fastest Scouts in each rank at the District level, than you need to advance the three fastest Scouts from each rank in each Pack. The same would be for rank to Pack Race of Champions or rank to District Race of Champions. The reason for this is that the three fastest Scouts could all come from within the same rank from the same Pack. The same goes for the other races. Sure, advancing multiple Scouts may show inaccuracies in your racing system but that is after all - racing!

[Stan Pope]

Sure, advancing multiple Scouts may show inaccuracies in your racing system but that is after all - racing!

If there are inaccuracies in your racing system, then you should be investigating and correcting them!