Pinewood Derby

We had a fun time at the Pinewood Derby last night. McKay's car ("The Cougar") did really well overall, although we're all still a little confused about the final outcome. But the most important thing is that McKay had fun and saw an improvement over last year.

Here's McKay by the big fancy computerized track they have (I remember going to Pinewood Derbys with a wooden track and stopwatches!).

And each scout got his own "Pro Racer" name tag:

Most of the cars checked in and ready to go (McKay had number 9):

And McKay with his building/designer consultant Dad:

While we were waiting for the race to start, Courtney & Hayley had fun racing with the missionaries on a Hot Wheels track set up at the back.

And Hannah picked out a good spot front and center on the floor.

Somebody made a lot of cupcakes and added a LOT of frosting for the dessert!

Finally, the races started. Here is McKay's Bear den during their race.

And I did manage to get one finish-line picture (well, almost the finish-line) of McKay's car racing -- he is in track 3 (counting from the top). Interestingly, the car he is just edging out here is the car that won the overall championship of the night.

McKay having fun watching his car win!

And here's McKay with his first place blue ribbon for being the fastest car in the Bear den (along with the 1st place winners for the Wolf den and Webelos).

As far as the final results, we're still scratching our heads a little. The race officials had quite a little huddle going on as they were determining results and when they announced McKay as the winner of the Bear den, they said they had a unique situation where the fastest car of the night was not the overall winner. McKay won the "Fastest Average Speed," meaning that overall his car was the fastest of all the cars that race. They have each den (Wolf, Bear, Webelos) do their own race (each car races four times; once in each lane on the track), then they take the top 3 winners from each den for the Grand Championship and have another race. I guess McKay's car didn't race as fast during the Grand Championship so he ended up not placing in the top 3. Some of the races were very close, with the top cars separated by only hundreths of a second.

They had large trophies for the three Grand Championship winners and small trophies for a few of the categories (best sportsmanship, etc.), but McKay didn't end up with a trophy and he was a little disappointed about that, considering how well his car did. I try to tell him that a trophy doesn't matter -- what's important to remember how much fun he had and know that he had a fast car!