Raingutter Regatta

Derby Master Notes - How to run the Rain Gutter Regatta

Determine and book the location - Do this in September when date is final.

• 2012: Bond shelter near the lake. Shelter was adequate size. Bored Scouts roamed the landscape and there was no play facilities nearby. Did have water tap nearby.
• 2013: White Oak Park. Good location, playground nearby. Shelter is a little small for 4 sets of gutters if there is bad weather.
• 2014: Kiwanis Shelter at Bond Park. Good location. Giant shelter, but also used for Year-End Picnic. Fireplace can be used if it's cold, and it was great. Need 75+ feet of hose to reach in to the shelter and fill gutters. 32 participants.
• 2015: Kiwanis Bond. 26 participants. Sunday.
• 2016
• 2017 North Cary Park
• 2018 North Cary Park
  • 21 participants
  • Met at storage locker (James Jackson) at 8:15
  • Check in at 9:30, races at 10
  • Two people set everything up; a third would have been good.
  • Everything back in storage locker by noon.

Publish flyer ~6 weeks in advance with announcement on web site.

• Update with date, time, and location. Everything else should be OK.
• Webmaster posts it.

Call for volunteers. Send out the Sign-up Genius 3 or 4 weeks out.

• Gutter pick-up and return (needs truck or trailer). 
• Set-up help (2-4 people). Moving tables, assembling gutter stands and filling. Arrive 30-45min prior to check-in start.
• Can use check-in help if you want; derby master has done this in the past.
• Need 4 Bracketologists to help keep brackets updated. Helps to have one per rank. Need to run through how this works and be comfortable with it.
• Data entry of judging sheet info. Volunteer for this so DM/ADM can circulate and check on issues.

Prep - week of Regatta

• Prep work:
  • Prepare spreadsheet to get familiar with it (TODO: attach spreadsheet here)
  • Print out rank signs for "marina"
  • Print out 5 judging sheets per rank
  • Print out collections of blank brackets (TODO: link to source)
  • Print out number labels for checkin/judging
    • This is nice and all, but really in 2018 I just used small stickers and a numbering system based on ranks...e.g. the first tiger registrant was "T1", the second "T2", and so on.  These were hand-written on small price labels.  It worked fine.

Regatta day - What To Bring

• From storage unit:
  • Gutters (4 sets)
  • Gutter stands (4 sets; each has two end pieces and one set of X-shaped rails made of 1x2)
  • Easels for brackets (2)
• From scout closet at FUMC:
  • Clipboards for judging
  • Pens
  • Pack banner
  • Flag
  • Easel if it's there
• From personal collections
  • Extension cord and outlet strip (if needed to run PC during the event)
  • PC for running spreadsheets. Load the spreadsheets on the PC before leaving the house!
  • Printed judging sheets
  • Printed labels, or small price stickers and a sharpie
  • Garden hose (probably two depending on site)
  • Sprayer head or valve for end of hose
  • Pliers or hose bibb key
  • Binder clips, clamps, or tape to hold brackets on easels (should just get some clips and put them on the easels)
  • Pool noodle and solo cups for impromptu boat assembly. Sometimes a new scout shows up without a boat.

Running the races

• Directions on running the races using brackets & spreadsheets are included in the Excel doc in the zip file here.
• From 2013 on, we have done double-elimination tournaments in order to simplify the running and reduce the "choke point" of the derby software.
  • Don't have brackets be too big. In 2014, we separated Wolf and Bear with improved results (though there were only 5 Bears.. so we could have combined). Do a survey to see how many plan to attend?
    • For small groups (< 8?) running round-robin style works out well. Derby software can handle this or gin up a spreadsheet. The boys get to race more this way and it should produce clear results.
  • Easels in the storage unit are for displaying the brackets, which can be printed up to 11x17 landscape size. A 16-seed double-elimination fits fairly well on two letter-sized pages in landscape mode, and those will fit on the easel as well.
  • In order to be totally fair, the brackets should be customized to the number of entries. There are web sites with PDF versions of brackets of all sizes. Download a whole library and then print the appropriate-sized bracket. Brackets included in .zip file.
  • For fairness, scouts should be seeded into the brackets (especially if there are not 2^n entries, someone will have a bye). This should be done randomly and transparently. Bingo balls would be a fun way to do it but would create a choke point unless you had 4 sets of balls, one for each rank group. A spreadsheet column with a random number would work too.
  • Could also do this with a pre-printed bracket and "BYE" entries in the spreadsheet, it just wouldn't look as clean. The BYE entries would also need to be random-seeded into the bracket to make things balanced. This is not guaranteed to be as fair as the custom-sized bracket.
• 2017, 2018 tweaks:
  • "Seeded" tournament based on checkin time.  That is, the first wolf registrant was seeded #1 in the Wolf division, and so on.  Fed these into standard double elimination brackets available online.
  • Combined ranks as needed to get a reasonable number of participants (e.g. 2018: 2 wolves and 3 bears combined into one division.)  In this case, we raced them all in one bracket, but we still awarded prizes within a rank -- so the fastest wolf and bear in the example above would both get a first place ribbon, even though only one of them could have won the bracket.