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JANINE UNGVARSKY Times Leader Correspondent

EXETER – All it took was some string and a scout to make a flat wooden frog turn into a racing machine at the annual Boy Scout Two Mountains District Derby Day Saturday.

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Cub Scout Jarrod Kline from Pack 100 in Plains Township takes part in the Raingutter Regatta Saturday at Wyoming Area High School in Exeter.

Don Carey/The Times Leader

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Cub Scouts and their family members watch the cars roll by during the Pinewood Derby at Wyoming Area High School in Exeter Saturday.

Don Carey/The Times Leader

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Cub Scouts from Dallas to Mountain Top met at the Wyoming Area Secondary Center gym for the time-honored tradition of Pinewood Derby racing, along with a Rain Gutter Regatta and frog jumping. About 250 first- through fifth-graders competed in the district event, according to Dana Kuhns, director of the Two Mountains District.

Pinewood Derby has been around for more than 50 years, Kuhns said, and scouts have participated in Rain Gutter Regattas—where boys design wooden boats with paper sails and then blow them down a water-filled rain gutter—for a number of years. But the frog races are a special tradition in the local council, Kuhns said.

The youngest scouts paint a pre-cut flat wooden frog, he said. The scout jiggles a string run through the frog’s “nose” to race. Brandon Richie, 6, from Pack 339 in Kingston, designed a red, white and blue frog aptly named American Frog who easily hopped to victory in his first heat. “I was pulling back so I wouldn’t have extra string,” Richie explained. “That would slow him down.”

Nothing slowed down two scouts from Pack 433 in Mountain Top. Max Albee, 6, and Josh Van Gorden were both derby winners.

“I thought I was going to do good,” Albee said as he held the green car he built with his dad.

Van Gorden said he overruled his father on the color choice for his car, insisting on a black top instead of the black and yellow dad wanted. “I’m going to make a black car next year,” he said.

Zachary Grey’s “Zach Attack” car was red with orange flames burning up the car’s front end. “My dad helped me make it,” said Grey, 8, from Pack 241 in Hunlock Creek.

Grey was already planning the car he would make next year with dad Mike. “I’m thinking more of a slant,” he said, tracing his finger along the car’s side. “Just something simple.”

The day isn’t about winning, said Tom Slavicek, Scout Executive/Chief Executive Officer of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Boy Scout Council. “I talk to a lot of adults who were scouts. Inevitably, they will tell you about that block of wood that they worked on with their parents and took to a race. They’ll tell you how much fun it was, and they’ll tell you that they lost but it didn’t matter because they had fun with their parents.”

Daniel Iovacchini, 8, from Pack 316 in Pittston, was having so much fun he had a giggle attack in the middle of his first Rain Gutter Regatta heat. It’s hard to blow and giggle at the same time, but Iovacchini eventually puffed to the finish line, to the delight of the crowd who cheered his persistence. “That never happened before,” Iovaccnini said, and to prove his point, he won his next heat without so much as a chuckle until it was over.

Iovacchini also raced in the Pinewood Derby as did brother Joshua, 6. That meant dad Dan helped with the design and construction of two boats and two cars. “Even thought it requires a lot of time it gives us an activity to do together as a family,” said dad, whose six children include another scout, John 13. “And we have a blast doing it.”

Scouts from Dallas to Mountain Top met for Pinewood Derby racing, along with a Rain Gutter Regatta and frog jumping.