Scouts race in Pinewood Derby in Sisters

Sister's Cub Scout Pack 139 held its annual Pinewood Derby race on Saturday morning, February 3, at Sisters Elementary School.

Twenty-eight scouts raced their five-ounce cars - all shaped from a block of pine - down a 25-foot ramp in three-second heats. A new electronic timer revealed that often only milliseconds separated winners from those in hot pursuit.

Cub Master Cory Stengel officiated. Bill MacDonald set up the heats, and Steve Hunt manned the computer timer. Scouts competed both in terms of how creatively they had built their cars and how fast they could get their cars to roll down the track.

The scouts with the best designs were judged to be Dalton Early (Snakeskin car), Daniel Hunt (three miniature outhouses for Papa, Mama and Baby bears), Andrew Mayes (Lightning McQueen), Shawn Horton (aerodynamic racer) and Christian Hunt (Pirate Ship).

In what seems to be an inevitable trade-off between design and speed, the three fastest cars in the pack were all variants on simple aerodynamic wedges and raced by Ethan Stengel (first), Zach Jones (second) and Andrew Stengel (third).

The three were separated by only 0.008 seconds. All top finishers in each age group are eligible to race in the Fremont District race in March - these include: Chayce Sproat, Chayse Head and Spencer Kemp (Tiger Cubs); Daniel Schlatter, Tucker Brink, and Alec Gannon (Wolf Cubs); Ross Grant, Daniel Hunt and Donny Lucas (Bear Cubs); and Ethan Stengel, Zach Jones and Andrew Stengel (Webelos).