There are several types of awards that can be used for your race, depending on your budget.
Trophies
First, second and third place trophies are the traditional awards that are given out. Usually, two sets of trophies are awarded for each race group, one set for speed and the other set for design. The cost for trophies can vary quite a bit depending on height, number of columns and adornments.
- Pre-Assembled - Usually, the trophies that are purchased are already assembled.
- Many organizations get their trophies through a local trophy shop. This can be convenient, but not always the least expensive option.
- For Awana Clubs, the Awana Supply Catalog actually has a pretty inexpensive set of trophies. You do need to also get the speed and design sets of plates to mount on the trophies.
- There are online sources for trophies. These might end up being less expensive than local trophy stores. Dinn Brothers is one of those.
- Kits - You can save some money by getting trophy kits and assembling them yourselves. TrophyKits.com is one source for these kits.
- Do-It-Yourself - Some people have even created their own trophies. It adds a personalized touch to the event and can save quite a bit of money. Below are a couple of examples that were made by ah8tk and BallBoy, respectively, members of the Derby Talk forum. These also are a great way to display the cars.
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Medals
Trophies can get quite expensive. If the budget is tight, your organization might consider awarding medals for some or all of the race groups.
- Neck Medals - Many trophy suppliers have medals to wear around the racers' necks. You can find them in Gold, Silver, Bronze or the same medal, but with Blue, Red and White ribbons. For Cub Scouts, ScoutStuff.org has Gold, Silver and Bronze medals available.
- Pin on Medals - Some medals can be pinned to the racer's shirt. Some organizations may allow the kids to wear the medals on their uniforms, even after the race.
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Pins
There are small pins that you may be able to find, that serve well as participation awards of for some special awards. They can even be thank you gifts to the race crew.
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Plaques
Some trophy suppliers do have plaques that you can use in lieu of trophies. You can also make up some of your own.
- For some of our Awana Club races, I made up simple wooden plaques for our Adult Division. Below is an example. I took some scrap wood, cut it to size, routed the profile on the edges, stained it, applied some cutouts that I printed out, and then clear coated it all. I had some spare speed and design plates, so I added those in the middle.
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Ribbons
- Participation - Each racer should get something for their participation in the race. Ribbons are good for that. Awana bulk kits come with participation ribbons, but you can also order them separately.
- As Awards - I have seen some give out ribbons in lieu of trophies. They can have 1st, 2nd and 3rd on the ribbons or the fair style of Blue, Red and White, and be simple or fancy. For our Cub Scout District races, at the end of the event we would have a final race for the top finishers from each rank and we gave out large fancy ribbons to signify their overall award level.
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Certificates
Many organizations give out certificate awards to help more racers to be able to take home a prize. Some nice certificate paper can be purchased at office supply stores. Here's a list of certificate awards that we have used in the past. The example below was created using Microsoft PowerPoint with some added graphics. You can find graphics files and certificate files in our Race Documents and Graphics download page to make up your own certificates.
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Other Ideas
- Gift Certificates - We don't do trophies for our Adult Division, but we have given out gift certificates. These could be most anything, like for home improvement stores, movie theaters, restaurants, etc.
- Candy - Giant candy bars or other candy make good awards for kids.
- Patches - You can get custom patches made up for your race. We made the one below for one of our Cub Scout District races. All scouts that participated received one. These ones were purchased from Stadri Emblems, but there are other online sources.
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