COMPUTERIZED TOURNAMENT SCHEDULING SOFTWARE

Dr. Craig M. Ross
Indiana University

I. Introduction

Probably the question most often asked and one of the greatest computer need expressed by recreation and park staffs pertains to sport scheduling software which includes league and tournament scheduling programs. There are a number of software scheduling programs currently on the market ranging in price from $89 to $3,000. The wide range of prices reflects the diversity and complexity of the features of each software package.

II. Is Computerized Sport Scheduling For You?

Computerized sport scheduling programs are not suited for every sport program. Realistically, computerized scheduling is best designed for tournaments of 50 teams/individuals or more. Less than this number, the recreational sports programmer would probably be wise to schedule the tournament by hand. The amount of preliminary set-up required for any of the commercially available computer programs would not be worth the time for less than 50 teams/individuals. In some cases of where there is a small number of entries, simple word processing features such as tables and merging are all that one needs. However, for large tournaments, computerized scheduling is the only way to effectively manage the details involved with tournament scheduling.

Also, it is important that the department is willing to invest time and resources in converting from a manual system to a computerized system. Time will need to be devoted to reviewing the number of software packages on the market and identifying which program would be best for that particular base. There will also be a considerable amount of time actually spent on converting the present manual system to the computer version. Development of facility codes, division and leagues codes, establishing scheduling priorities and creating new entry forms are just a few of the tasks that will need to be completed before beginning the process.

III. Suggested features in a sport scheduling package.

When considering the purchase of a sport scheduling software program, there are a number of key features that should be considered. However, what is best for each particular base will depend to a large degree on the number of teams entering, the league/tournament formats chosen, existing computer hardware, and budget limitations of the agency. The following are some of the suggested features that should be considered before purchasing any scheduling software:

Team Capacity. Depending on the tournament needs, make sure the program can handle the upper limits in terms of teams, leagues, divisions, and the number of different facility sites that could be used.

League Formation. It is very important that the staff have the capability of deciding whether the selection of teams and the creation of both leagues and divisions will be established through an automatic random selection by the computer, or be a set of staff-defined criteria.

Scheduling Conflicts. The program should check for scheduling overlaps as well as all for re-scheduling of game dates for any reason including team conflicts, weather cancellations and other programming concerns.

Scheduling Formats. The program should be able to schedule for round robin, double round robin, single elimination, double elimination, meets and the various challenge tournament formats. With each of these formats, the ability to seed teams and assign handicap scores is important.

Master Schedule. A valuable feature of a computerized system is that is allows for the creation of master schedule reports that can be viewed on-screen or on a printed report for the entire tournament schedule in advance for a particular date, facility, league or team. Being able to view these reports lends great flexibility to the staff for rescheduling games, preparing sport facilities and the monitoring of the number and the skill level of game officials, supervisors and other employees.

Team Schedules. In addition to developing a master schedule, most all programs will provide team scheduling. However, items to look for in team scheduling include on-screen viewing as well as hardcopy or disk files creation, editing capability, and home vs. visitor assignments. A number of programs will assign the "home team" classification to the same team for every game in the tournament.

Reports. The design and actual print-outs of reports and team schedules should be flexible enough and resemble those that were being used when scheduling was done manually. Because a computerized system can create detailed reports that are specific to the sports program, it is probably the most important component of the scheduling program. Game times, because of participant confusion, should be printed in standard am/pm format rather than military time, dates should also include the day of the week, and facility sites should be represented by the name of the facility rather than a code. Printing of individual game score sheets, including eligible players, is also very beneficial. Facility schedules/reports by specific sites, by court/field and be either a range of dates, times, divisions or leagues can all be useful when managing sport tournaments.

Team Rosters. The program should provide a means of generating and maintaining team listings and rosters by sport, division and leagues as well as an alphabetical phone list with addresses of team captains for mail-merging of form letters.

Standings. The capability to generate league standings with won-loss records and "games behind" calculations are important to some league administrators.

Optical Scanning. For large tournaments, being able to scan into the system team entry form information can save numerous hours of data entry. It also eliminates the many data entry errors that frequently occur with a large number of entries.

In summary, an effective computerized sport scheduling program can save many hours of routine and tedious work. In addition, a computerized program can help to eliminate the human mistakes that are inevitable with scheduling. It has enabled many to do more complete and accurate scheduling in much less time than they previously spent with their manual system.

Last updated: 14 February 1998
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~sportmgt/ttext.html
Comments: cmross@indiana.edu
Copyright 1998, The Trustees of Indiana University