Well, the traffic barrels certainly would be fun if they shut off the lights for part of the competition. To reduce worry about all the switching of lights on the lifetime of the bulbs, they could use LEDs (I reccommend the
L2K2-MWC4-11-0200 (that's the brightest cool-white luxeon K2 star that they offer), but the neutral-white or warm-white LEDs might be easier on the eyes.
I tested the efficiency of one of the cool-whites as my science project in 9th grade, and found them to be slightly more efficient than the fluorescent I tested (and in this case, much brighter as well).