Woodward North Cub Scouts Host Pinewood Derby

The idea is simple. You take a seven inch block of pine, four nails as axels and four plastic wheels and race it down a 38-foot sloped track. But once you use the imaginations of Woodward North’s Pack 582 Cub Scouts on shaping these pinewood racers, you get an exciting competition of speed between the most fantastic vehicles you can imagine.

Sixty-four Woodward North boys participated in the Pinewood Derby, from the first grade “Tigers” through “Wolves,” “Bears,” “WEBLO 1s” up through the fifth grade “WEBLO 2s.” The cars race in groups of four, each car racing four times and dropping its slowest time. With 69 total races to run in just over two hours, it required the combined organization of a dozen adult volunteers to organize, Cub Scouts being one of the few activities where the dads are the majority of the organization.

The times were incredibly close, with most of the cars being separated by less than a 10th of a second. The track record, broken again this year, was 3.142 seconds, which translates to about 207mph at scale. 

Each grade has trophies for the top three and the design award winner. The pack awarded overall winning trophies following a grand finale with Alex Moss in first place, Ameiya Pednekar second, Corey Johnson third, Chance Crigler fourth, and Jeremy Chen in fifth place overall. But the most important trophy of the day is the Sportsmanship trophy, won this year by Matthew Ausman.