John Parizek was standing on a stage in the middle of the Mall of America’s rotunda, waving some sort of a racing flag and speaking into a microphone. Even though he was less than twenty-five yards away, nothing Parizek said was intelligible. Granted, the Malliest Mall of Them All is a noisy proposition on most Saturday afternoons, but with the place hosting the annual Boy Scouts of America Northern Star Council Pinewood Derby championships, the decibel level was skull rattling.
Nearby, the mall’s amusement park was churning and the rotunda stage was surrounded by hundreds of chattering, uniformed Cub Scouts, their assorted parents, siblings, and random curious passersby.
“This is boring,” a boy complained to an older man who was seated next to him in the back row.
“Shut up, George,” the man said. “Can I just tell you how tired I am of being your grandpa?”
If the squirrelly behavior of many of the kids in attendance (not to mention the churlishness of the grandfather) was any kind of a barometer, it’s possible George had a point.
The Pinewood Derby has been a hallowed Scouting tradition since 1953, when the first race was held in Manhattan Beach, California; the races remain an annual rite of passage for Scouts and their fathers (or, increasingly, mothers); but, people-watching aside, it’s not much as far as spectator sports go, particularly for restless youngsters with the temptations of the mall beckoning on all sides.
For most of the participants, the real action takes places in the weeks and months leading up to the championship. That is when the Scouts, working from the same uniform kit (a block of pine wood, four plastic discs, and four nails), attempt to transform those raw materials into “the fastest gravity-propelled miniature ground vehicle.” Preparation begins early for the pack-level races and district championships that serve as qualifiers for the main event at MOA. The Northern Star Council—one of the largest in the country—encompasses the Twin Cities, a broad swath across the central part of the state, and four counties in western Wisconsin. Thirty-thousand Scouts and their carefully crafted, often elaborately painted and decorated cars started the year in the running, a number that had been whittled down to 187 by the time the championships rolled around.
The official rules are remarkably specific, and Derby officials are notorious for enforcing strict compliance, often in the face of fierce scrutiny and protestations from parents: Cars cannot exceed five ounces (race scales will flag violations up to one-hundredth of an ounce); only officially approved wheels and axles are allowed; wheels may not be “rounded, pointed, concaved, shaved, or otherwise modified.” Scouts must be present and in uniform for their cars to compete, and are required to build a new car each year.
Speeds can vary a great deal from race to race, but Parizek, working with race director Jim Smeby (who owns the track and timing equipment and participates in more than fifty Pinewood Derbies per year), works hard to ensure uniform racing conditions. And Parizek personally inspects and weighs every car before the championships. “I get real picky when it comes to weights and wheels,” he said. “A lot of the parents don’t like it, but if they’re over by even a fraction of an ounce the weight has to come off or they don’t run. When I get complaints I always tell people to give me their names and I’ll happily put them on the committee for next year.”
Parizek, who also serves as master of ceremonies at the championships, is an instructor for the local plumbers’ union, and for the last eleven years he has been the chair of the Northern Star Council’s annual Derby.
Smeby’s track, sloping at slightly more than forty-five degrees (as mandated by official rules), features three lanes. Races consist of three heats, with each entry getting an opportunity to run in all three lanes; the combined scores determine the winner. Scouts don’t actually participate in the races other than as observers; their cars are “impounded” after weigh-in and are raced in rapid and efficient fashion by Smeby and a handful of volunteers. Parizek enters the times in a computer, often while surrounded by fathers transcribing the information into pocket notebooks. Some of these characters were visibly nervous, and one man spent a good deal of time tapping numbers into a calculator.
Despite intense competition, apparent disparities in lane speeds, and times that plunged with each heat, a sleek, thin, bright orange car emblazoned with Firebird decals—the creation of Adam Sicora, a fifth-grader at St. Paul’s Nokomis Montessori and a seasoned Derby veteran—was the wire-to-wire leader at this year’s championships. After running a 6.66 in the first heat, when the majority of the other cars were running into the sevens and even eights, Adam followed up with another 6.66 in lane two, and 6.67 in lane three. On the heels of a third-place finish in 2006 (his brother Matt took home the second-place trophy, and finished fifth this year), Adam breezed to victory in this year’s championship.
“We’ve actually won a bunch of trophies in the last few years,” he said. “This year Matt finished third at district, and I was fourth, which shows that I definitely fine-tuned my car between races. You have to keep trying to get better. Sometimes, though, you can tinker with something that you think is going to make you faster but it messes up the aerodynamics and you get worse. Our friend who won the district came in 188th at the Mall of America.”
This was Adam’s last championship—his Derby eligibility expires next year when he’ll enter the sixth grade, but he, his brother, and their father, Chris, have spent a lot of time zeroing in on the qualities that make for a Pinewood Derby champion.
“We’ve looked at websites that have tips,” Adam said, “and Matt and I did a science project on pinewood cars for school, and learned a lot about things like inertia, aerodynamics, and potential energy. Even if you think you have a really fast car, though, you can usually count on something messing up. I had a good car, but I was just lucky that nothing went wrong this year.”
