The Skills Fest

A derby day that doesn’t rely on someone’s handwritten heat sheet

Car check-in, concurrent activity stations, and unit rosters — so the race stays the fun part.

A derby day — a pinewood-style race day or similar single-track event — looks simpler than a multi-class rotation event, but it has its own version of the same problem: every entrant needs to be checked in, weighed or inspected if your rules require it, assigned to a heat and lane, and tracked through results, all without a paper heat sheet turning into the single point of failure for the whole afternoon.

How your event maps to the app

Your track, lanes, or check-in stations become rooms with a capacity — how many cars, entrants, or heats can be processed through inspection or staging at once. Heats or race blocks become timeslots, each one a scheduled block with its own set of entrants assigned in advance rather than called out ad hoc. Families register their entrant ahead of time through a signup code, so check-in on race day is a matter of confirming an entrant who’s already on the roster rather than registering them from scratch in line. If your event groups entrants by age or den/level, that grouping is applied automatically at registration, the same way age-group rules work for any other event, so heats are built correctly before race day even starts.

Your eventIn The Skills Fest
Racer registration by pack/clubUnits + signup-code self-registration
Car and racer arrivalCheck-in numbers with live counts
Side activity stationsRooms + classes on the schedule grid
Age groups or divisionsConfigurable levels
Volunteer assignmentsTeacher/staff roles with per-station rosters
Race heats and timingNot included — use your race software

Who runs this kind of event?

Derby-style race days are a Cub Scout tradition (the pinewood derby), and the same single-track, heat-and-lane format is used by other clubs and programs running comparable build-and-race events — the underlying scheduling need is identical regardless of what’s racing.

Common questions

Yes — entrants register ahead of time, and heats can be built from that roster in advance, so race day starts with a schedule already in hand rather than a sign-in table building one on the fly.

The Skills Fest is independent software. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any organization named on this page; names are used only to describe the groups our customers belong to.