Game Scheduling

Game scheduling can seem to be one of the toughest jobs until you get the mindset or knack. This especially if you are trying to over-optimize based on many criteria that all have the same priority. Things that come into consideration are: balanced number of home and away games, balanced number of early morning or late afternoon games, no repeat match ups until all have been matched-up, head coaches of two teams not have conflicting games, back-to-back games at the same field so referee teams can be scheduled for multiple games, and so on.

Key ideas and questions to answer to get you started are:

• Determine field availability schedules
• Determine divisions: number of teams in each age group
• Determine what your regions policy for rain-outs or conflicts on field use are
• Try and get a calendar of events from the field owners so you do not schedule games on known unavailable dates
• For each division, figure out the season practice start date, game start date, and last game date.
• Will you have post-season tournaments either in or outside the region?
• Are you doing a weekend tournament or a regular season with one to two games a weekend?
• Using Round Robin play with stats to determine rankings in the end or a single- or double-elimination ladder with no ties and guaranteed outcome from each game?

Get the largest blocks of time regularly at a single field and schedule all of a given divisions games at that same field each week as much as possible. This allows everyone to know where to go each week; not only parents, players and coaches but also the referees. It allows you to optimize a filed lining and goals for the age division that is being supported. Generally one field, if available 24x7, can handle 6 to 10 games in a weekend day and that many teams for during the week, after-school practice. This all depends on how many times a week you practice, how long practices are, how much daylight is left and so on.

By sizing your divisions to match a given field, it makes it much easier on everyone involved. So instead of 20 teams in a division, consider two divisions of ten teams each on two different fields. If you do not have a logical break based on geographic of age, arbitrarily pick.

Note: AYSO does not allow creating major and minor divisions. But there is a new AYSO-Flex program for concurrent play of all-star teams.

General rules of thumb. A practice session should be no longer than a game length for a given age group. Two teams can share a field for practice; one in each half and then scrimmage if they like as well. If you allow rescheduling due to rain-outs or other issues, leave 10-20% of your schedule slots empty.

What if you have an odd number of teams in a division? Simply round up and schedule as if there is an even number of teams. Then, when finished with assignments, one of the template teams will not have a real team assigned to it. That team is called the "bye" team and any team assigned against them has a bye in their scheduled that week. Another technique to handle odd numbers of teams is to make three teams each week do a progressive, round robin game. Take the bye team and make them play with the first two teams of the game scheduled otherwise. Then play 3 1/2 games where each half has a different match up between the teams. a vs b, then b vs c, then c vs a. Each team counts the score against the opponent and against them in their 2-half game and uses that for the standings.

When there are not too many constraints or exceptions, one of the best and easiest ways to generate a good schedule is using a spreadsheet or table template. The idea is an optimal schedule for 'n' teams playing 'n+1' weeks (complete round robin) is available in a table. You then simply assign each playing week to a table column and each team to one of the pseudo-template ID'ed teams. Game time slots and fields are assigned to the rows or row/column intersections if irregular. A tournament ladder, whether single- or double-eliminaation, is a template that can only be filled out as you progress along.

If you only have 'm' weeks to play and the number of teams 'n' is greater than this, then you have to use a point system to determine rankings as you cannot complete the full round robin. If 'm' weeks is greater than 'n+1', then some teams will have to play twice. If a small number of repetitions, then simply throw out the first of the two match-ups between teams when determining standings from the results.

Because of the template design for regularly jumbling up start times as well as home/away, it is usually best to keep the schedule in time line order with the template. But you can rotate the column (weekend) assignment to get around coach conflicts that may still exist. Instead of assigning week 1 to column 1, assign week 1 to column 5 in the table schedule and then proceed contiguously from there. When you reach the end of the table schedule, start back at the beginning of the table. Another solution is to switch the assignments of a real team to the virtual team in the schedule. There is nothing that says your regions team 1 has to be team 1 in the schedule. Make any assignment you want. Try these techniques to get around any conflict such as a coach who head coaches two teams in two different divisions. Often with simple changes like this, you can clear up the conflicts.

Regional Commissioners Manual - chapter 8

Region 76 templates

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