While scrolling through Facebook on the weekend, Krista came upon a fantastic event making it’s return to Saint John. She reached out to Deborah Lawton, community programs co-ordinator for the Lily Lake Pavilion, to find out all the “deets”.
The APEGNB Saint John Soapbox Derby is an annual event that is held on Cranston Avenue. The derby race is very well supported by our community, partners and sponsors. This year, there will be 36 soapbox derby cars racing down Cranston Avenue. The average age of the driver? 10 years old.
The NB Soap Box Derby is an annual event and actually started on the entrance coming into Rockwood Park. The first race was held back in 2011. This has grown over the years – in the beginning it involved about 200 students. Now? 2000!
The derby has two different divisions – a stock and a super stock division. All of the derby cars are sponsored by either one or more businesses in the area. The sponsors can use their car internally for a driver from within their company to participate in race day or they can take that car and donate it out to a school or a community partner.
There are 25 schools that participate in the actual derby day itself. We also have other community partners like our PALS (Partners Assisting Local Schools). They have a car that is sponsored and driven by a child from Big Brothers Big Sisters. That is just one example of a car that’s sponsored out into our community.
Krista commented to Deborah “Now, that must be an enviable, like there’s only, you say, 36 cars? That’s got to be an enviable position to be able to be a racer in one of the divisions.”
Deborah agreed and said within the schools, they do really wonderful things. They either have essay contests or other competitions that the students have to participate in; something that the school set up for them to apply to be the driver for the derby car. Within the school system, the children are all in grade five or in middle school that are the drivers. Some of the sponsor’s private business cars, the drivers might be a little bit younger, but the average age of the drivers participating is 10.
Krista also wanted to hear about APEGNB – the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of New Brunswick and how they got involved with this.
Deborah explained that APEGNB came on board a number of years ago, and have been a wonderful title sponsor and partner with this event. Being engineers, they really could appreciate the educational element with this gravity soapbox derby racing. One thing that they’re actually adding into our school program this year is they are presenting at school assemblies , launching the soapbox derby cars and drivers and teams. They’re actually going to go into the schools and doing educational presentations on just how soapbox derby racing works.
Today (May 4) all of the school cars are being delivered to the participating schools. The derby car are going to be in the schools, where the students will be able to see them at their school assemblies, they’ll be able to have extra information and educational teachings as to how the soapbox derby gravity racing works.
Deborah explained that most of the schools do have assemblies that we’re able to attend, where they announce their driver and their pit crew. The pit crew is made up of four other students from within the school system that are there on derby day, and they’re just that, they’re the pit crew. They make sure that the car is in working order, that the driver and the car are where they need to be at particular times. There is a pit zone area at the top of the hill that’s sponsored by Saint John Energy. That’s where all of our derby teams, their parents, guardians, teachers, principals, people that are out to support the teams, that’s where they hang out throughout the day.
Where does the money raised go?
All the funds raised from the NB Soap Box Derby, all of the sponsorship dollars go right back into programming through the Lily Lake Pavilion because they are a registered charity, and everything that they do is to keep this building open and create recreational and educational activities in Rockwood Park. Deborah’s program is called Pals in the Park. It works in partnership with Anglophone South School District, the Pals organization, Lily Lake Pavilion, JDI, Kids on the Go Bus. They bring about 2,000 students from 25 participating schools into Rockwood Park throughout the school year for recreational and educational activities at no cost to the school or the student. They provide the programming and provide the transportation for them to come and enjoy their time in Rockwood Park.
What happens on Race Day?
On race day, there are practice runs for all the drivers in the morning because the children have never driven these cars. Last year, there was a wonderful police officer who stopped by with his radar gun. Some of the cars were clocked at doing above 38 kilometers an hour, so they do move. They do get quite a speed coming down Cranston Avenue. After the practice runs are the official opening ceremonies at noon, and then we will get into single elimination races.
As the day goes on, the speeds get faster in the derby cars because they learn more about the aerodynamics of it. When they first get into the car, they’re a little bit more apprehensive. They sit a little bit taller up in the car. They’ve never gone down a street before in a car with a helmet. And so then as the day goes on, and they continue to gain confidence in what they’re doing and how the car handles, and that the lower that they get into the car, the faster they go, it gets very, very competitive. And some of these races are like a hundredth or a thousandth of a second determined the winner of the race.
Are there volunteer opportunites?
You bet! Deborah said they had volunteers out on the weekend getting the cars all cleaned and signed up. Derby week is full of activities as far as volunteers are concerned!
Starting on the Tuesday night of derby week, the cars are actually stripped apart by volunteers. Everything is checked. The brakes are realigned for the length of the child; the cars are all custom fit for the child that’s driving the individual car. All of the mechanics of the car are checked. Everything’s put back together. Volunteers take the weight of every driver, and then weights are actually added into the cars so that every car goes down the hill at the weight of the heaviest driver, so nobody has any weight advantage or disadvantage. And then on
Friday night, so the team works on that from Tuesday to Thursday. Then Friday night, everything is packed up and moved over to Cranston Avenue.
Want to get involved or find out more?
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NbSoapBoxDerby/
Website: https://saintjohn.soapboxderby.org/
Email: sjsoapboxderby@gmail.com
