Scheduling A Youth Sports Tournament

If you've ever scheduled a youth sports tournament, you know it's not that simple. All teams like to have their coaches with them, but when coaches have multiple teams in the same tournament, it gets complicated fast. It can sometimes be overwhelming. Here's a look at the math behind it. But if you are scheduling a tournament anyway, below are some pointers that you may find helpful.

Generating games for greater scheduling flexibility

December 6, 2025 By Tim@Universal

Are you generating tournament games the right way? If your tournament has a large number of teams in a single group / bracket (7 or …


The trouble with 3 team brackets

December 5, 2025 By Tim@Universal

Some tournaments I work with have a lot of 6 team divisions. Usually those are divided into two brackets with 3 teams each. Like this: …


How do you like your 5 team divisions?

December 5, 2025 By Tim@Universal

People tend to have strong opinions about 5 team divisions. Many tournaments love 5 team divisions because each team plays every one else exactly once. …


Which games should you schedule first?

August 20, 2023 By Lori@Universal

Once you have all the games created for your tournament, you have to schedule them (put them on the calendar). Say you have 250 games …


How many games are there in a tournament?

August 20, 2023 By Lori@Universal

Once you've created all the divisions for your tournament, you have to "create" games. Any tournament software you're using would usually let you create games …


The benefit of aligning start times

August 19, 2023 By Lori@Universal

Most tournaments try to accommodate up to 3 teams per coach. Let's take an example of a tournament where games start at top of the …


How many teams can your tournament accomodate?

August 19, 2023 By Lori@Universal

One of the first scheduling questions that tournament organizers have to reckon with is, just how many teams should they register given the number of …


Dividing into divisions

August 8, 2023 By Lori@Universal

In any large tournament, the first step is to divide the teams into flights (aka divisions). You may have 12 U9 Boys teams with varying …


Math behind scheduling

August 8, 2023 By Tim@Universal

For the nerds among us, here are some numbers to give you a sense of just how complicated scheduling a youth sports tournament can be. …