Style Awards

Thanks to one of our Scouters, here's how we do it in our Pack.

Awards at Pinewood Derbies fall into two major categories: Style awards and Speed awards.
With Speed awards there are a plethora of tools -- theoretical, electronic, and mechanical -- which facilitate the proper distribution of these awards. These include Perfect-N charts, $300 timers, tracks with aluminum plating, solenoid-based starting gates, and so on. All of these make identifying the fastest cars quite objective and about as error-free as one could hope.
But with Style awards, instead of tools mostly what you have is questions. First of all, what criteria should one use? Do you reward imagination and creativity over flawless implementation? Do you reward a superior product that was built by a parent over an inferior product that a Scout created all by himself? Even if you can answer these questions, there is still lots of subjectivity as to what makes one design better than another. And no matter how much you agonize over your decisions, someone will be unhappy with them.
In Pack 146, we solve these problems by giving a Style award to every Scout!
The awards are made up ahead of time, a dozen or so for each Den. They're printed on fancy paper certificates with little ribbons attached and they bear names such as "Turbo Charged", "King of the Road", or "Mean Machine". After the cars for a Den are registered and impounded, the certificates are placed with the cars by the "judges". When that Den collects their cars just before their races, they get to stand in front of the crowd to announce their awards and show off their cars to the audience.
Here's a sample of what they look like. Actual size is 8-1/2"x3-1/2".

And here's the Microsoft Word document that was used to print them. Feel free to make use of it. The fancy paper on which the awards are printed and the ribbons were purchased at a local office supply store.
Kudos go to Dan Kurtenbach, our Scouter who came up with the design for the awards and also the process by which they are awarded.

Last updated on February 6, 2002, 9:00 {M
Copyright 2002 © by Cory Young. All rights reserved.