Granville resident Jeff Gill stands at the ready, preparing to announce the next race at the Pinewood Derby, a Scouting tradition older than most of the people in attendance.
“Stewards ready. Officials ready. And go!”
The annual event, held this year on Saturday, Jan. 24 at Granville Intermediate School, has been happening in the village for decades. During the derby, scouts race miniature wooden cars they built with some help from adults.
Gill first participated in a pinewood derby 55 years ago. Back then, the tracks were all wooden and a timekeeper stood watch at the finish line. Now, the cars pass through a finish line with computerized sensors that automatically report the rankings and speeds. But the cars themselves are still created by hand.
The kids are given a block of pine wood, plastic wheels and axles. Using saws and sanders, some extra decor and paint, the kids design their cars for both looks and speed.
Luke, a fifth-grade Arrow of Light scout — the highest rank in Cub Scouts — designed his car as a Ferrari 156 F1 ‘sharknose.’
“I’ve been watching it since I was a little kid,” Luke said. With two older brothers and a younger brother, the derby has been a family tradition for over 10 years. At home, their father’s passion for woodworking has led them to also make bird houses and even some furniture together.
“My older boys always wanted them to be some kind of animal that was fast. They never wanted them to look like cars,” said Emily Schmitt, Luke’s mother. As a den leader, Schmitt also helps to judge the cars for “best in show” and “most creative” awards.
One criteria for the awards is that it has to be obvious that a child helped make the car. Some kids add weights to make the cars faster, but they all have to be under 5 ounces at weigh-in.
The younger kids race first while some of the older kids “steward” the race, helping to gather and prepare cars before each “heat.” As the scouts grow up and take more initiative in their designs, the derby gets more competitive.
“You can win at life but you might not win at Pinewood Derby,” said Jason Collins, parent of Sawyer, a bear scout.
Tom Race, who arranges the cars on the track and kicks off all the heats, remembers when his kids were younger and they spent time workshopping their cars together. His daughter Emmalynn, 13, and son Skyler, 16, both competed in the derby as kids, and now they help run the event as stewards.
“When we got the blocks, we would be down in Florida visiting my parents. It became a generational thing,” Race said.
The event drew parents, siblings and grandparents, all cheering for their scouts. For the parents who spent hours helping with the tools, building and designing, it was rewarding to see their kids’ visions become reality.
Dominick Thompson, a Webelos scout, spent days in the barn working with his dad. He modeled the car after a police car to honor his dad, John Thompson, a Franklin County Sheriff’s Office deputy. He named it “K9-3.”
“I picked the car number mainly because the guy who drives it is a friend of my dad’s, but he just had to put down his dog partner, his K9 partner,” Dominick said. When the dog was euthanized, just a week before the derby on Martin Luther King day, Dominick decided to dedicate his car to the dog.
After all of the “classes” had raced, it was time for the championship. Kids in their scout uniforms crowded along the flagged rope near the track.
When scores were in, Bryan Wolfe, coordinator of the derby for his third year in a row, handed out trophies to the top three per each class, along with the creativity awards and a “turtle award” for the slowest car to cross the finish line.
Any speed over 8 mph was cause for celebration. But with runs consistently landing over the 8 mph threshold, Freddie Albright, an Arrow of Light scout, took home the championship with a record-breaking 8.1 mph speed.
“My first race today I broke the track record… and then I beat it again,” Freddie said.
His legacy in Granville Scouts BSA Pack 3 will be memorialized on the “Granville Cup” trophy which stands at nearly half his height. It will be tough for future generations to beat the all-time track record, but for all of the scouts who will return next year to compete, it serves as inspiration.
Mia Fischel writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.