Starting a contest

[K-Train]

Howdy,
I'm a teacher and mentioned about a year ago to my principal how a little cook-off might be cool to draw attention to some of the programs we have at our school. Flash forward to a few weeks ago, my principal came to our last cook-ff of the year and now is full into the idea. He's already started contacting officials at our school board and has gotten some approval. I'm trying to convince him that a chicken/rib contest would be the best way to go.One idea I have is to take select students from our school and have them "cook" with the teams that enter. Not sure how that would go over though. I also thought maybe we could just invite the other schools in our county to cook and have it be a school vs school contest, maybe with some local brethren as guest judges along with school big wigs. Throw in some kind of peoples choice as a fund raiser and get local business to sponsor. Maybe even have our students make the trophies in our Technology Education class (shop class). I think he has visions of grandour with pro teams cooking.
Any advice any of you could offer would be awesome. Thanks in advance.
Keith

[Teamfour]

I think having students cook with teams is a great idea. But I would amass the student participants via a totally random lottery. Identifying "select" students is asking for trouble.


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[K-Train]

^^^^^^^I hear ya. We would set up some kind of parameters, no dicsipline referrals, following our school honor code, etc. Then put those students into a lottery or something. Something else I gotta figure out.

[columbia1]

Nice, and refreshing idea, if I were in your neck of the woods I think it would be fun to have students on the teams, let them do the cooking with a little guidance from us(the pitmasters). This sounds like a double win, they learn things about BBQ'n that most people would pay hundreds for and we get the excitement of competing plus we are exposing new potential cooks to our world that will help grow our sport in the long-run. The bonus is all the community participation that this event could draw. This is the type of event you could probably get the local media involved into also!

[CBQ]

For a "pro" contest, you need to have things like reliable power and water, so it's potentially a larger investment in time and money - maybe more than a school wants to do. I think your idea of a chicken and rib contest is a good idea, and could be done without having a bunch of BBQ teams parking RVs and travel trailers overnight at your school.

Sanctioning it as a KCBS competitor series event may be a good idea to help bring in some pro teams.

[K-Train]

Originally Posted by columbia1

Nice, and refreshing idea, if I were in your neck of the woods I think it would be fun to have students on the teams, let them do the cooking with a little guidance from us(the pitmasters). This sounds like a double win, they learn things about BBQ'n that most people would pay hundreds for and we get the excitement of competing plus we are exposing new potential cooks to our world that will help grow our sport in the long-run. The bonus is all the community participation that this event could draw. This is the type of event you could probably get the local media involved into also!

Thanks a lot. I was thinking along the same lines with getting the kids involved. Might even lead to a school BBQ club. I hadn't thought of the media idea yet, I'm sure the leadership of my school would have thought of it, but now Monday I'll propose it and get credit for it

[Babyboomerboy]

Originally Posted by columbia1

Nice, and refreshing idea, if I were in your neck of the woods I think it would be fun to have students on the teams, let them do the cooking with a little guidance from us(the pitmasters). This sounds like a double win, they learn things about BBQ'n that most people would pay hundreds for and we get the excitement of competing plus we are exposing new potential cooks to our world that will help grow our sport in the long-run. The bonus is all the community participation that this event could draw. This is the type of event you could probably get the local media involved into also!

This is absolutely the right way to go. Having a (pitmaster) help the students rather than the students helping the (pitmasters) makes the contest more educational for the students and competitive for the pitmasters. You could also have some Certified BBQ Judges teach other students about judging the chicken and ribs if the aim is to produce a product like pro contest use. Either way, good luck with your efforts,its a great idea.

[K-Train]

Originally Posted by Babyboomerboy

This is absolutely the right way to go. Having a (pitmaster) help the students rather than the students helping the (pitmasters) makes the contest more educational for the students and competitive for the pitmasters. You could also have some Certified BBQ Judges teach other students about judging the chicken and ribs if the aim is to produce a product like pro contest use. Either way, good luck with your efforts,its a great idea.

Thanks. I like the idea of having some judges work with the students and maybe have the students help judge in some way.