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A place for Ultimate tournaments and leagues.
More specifically, this is a web application that enables tournament directors and league organizers to run their event from start to finish. I also hope for this site to improve the historical record for Ultimate at large.
Here are the rough steps involved in running a tournament through UltimateCentral:
Yes and no. First, that may sound like a lot of steps, but it doesn't take very long to set up on the site (I've seen people brand new to the site set up complete tournaments in less than 5 minutes). Second, it's necessary in order to achieve flexibility.
The long answer is that there's no fool-proof cookie-cutter way to run a tournament. There are some recommended formats (ie: the USA Ultimate Tournament Manual), but the real world is rarely that precise. Teams drop out, games aren't played, the schedule gets behind, certain teams from the same city want to avoid playing each other, etc. There are so many variables that effect a tournament that I had to make the site flexible for any configuration. The result is that you have to put in some leg-work to set up the base elements - schedule, fields, divisions, teams, pools, brackets - and then everything syncs together. For most tournaments, once everything is set up all you have to do is sit back and record game scores.
Finally, I do plan on adding some cookie-cutter tournament formats in the future.
Most people have a rough understanding of how tournaments and leagues are run due to participating in them, but there is more complexity in these events than an individual participant might notice. I'm going to explain how UltimateCentral structures a tournament or league and give some examples to explain how all the pieces fit together.
The first thing to know is that as far as UltimateCentral is concerned, a tournament and a league are the same thing. The only differences between a tournament and a league are the URL for the event and their semantic distinction on the site; everything else about the way they function is the same. For the rest of this explanation I will refer to either event as a tournament.
Every tournament starts with a name, a start date, and a primary location. The name of the tournament must be unique each year, but you can have multiple tournaments with the same name occurring year after year. The URL for the event is automatically determined from the name and start date:
The primary location determines where the tournament will show up on the map and is also used to send out the notification email. Users can request to be sent an email when an event is created within a certain radius of their location.
Each tournament has the following elements: Fields, a schedule (made up of Rounds), and Divisions. I'll talk about each of these elements separately.
Fields are the fields you play games on. All fields must have unique names and are automatically ordered by the system.
The schedule is made up of Rounds. Rounds must have unique names and occur at unique times; they are chronologically ordered by the system.
Divisions are separate competitive groups within a tournament. A tournament can have just one, or multiple divisions. Divisions must have unique names and can be ordered by the tournament admin. Divisions have sub-elements the same way a tournament does. The sub-elements of a division are: Teams and Groups.
Teams are the teams that play in the tournament. Teams must have unique names and are ordered by the tournament admin. This order should represents the team's seed, or preliminary rank against the other teams in the division. Games are played between teams in the same division; you cannot have a game between teams in different divisions.
Groups are collections of Games. There are two different kinds of groups: Pools and Brackets, each with their own structure. Groups must have unique names and are ordered by the tournament admin.
Pools are a type of Group and are used for round-robin play where every team in a pool plays every other team in the same pool. This is commonly known as "Pool Play" and often occurs on Saturday in a two day weekend tournament.
Brackets are another type of Group and are used for elimination-style tournaments. Brackets are well known for being used in the NCAA March Madness tournament; "Bracket Play" often occurs on Sunday in a two day weekend tournament.
Games are the heart and soul of a tournament and the most important element in the overall tournament structure. Games are made up of every element in the tournament structure. A game is between two Teams in the same Division, on a Field, during a Round, and inside a Group. Each team has a score and the game has a status of either Pending, Scheduled, In Progress, or Final. Games also have names that must be unique within their Group. The system will not allow scheduling conflicts for a game. It is impossible to schedule two games on the same field at the same time or schedule the same team to play two different games at the same time (this is why the schedule and fields must be set up before you can create any games).
There are three roles for users to interact with a tournament: Creator, Admin, and Score Reporter
The Creator is the account that created the tournament. The Creator has access to everything and is the only role that can add other permissions and toggle the section locks. (read more about section locks)
Admins have access to everything except the "Admin" page (ironic, I know).
Score Reporters only have access to the "Games" tab and can only report game scores.
All roles are subject to the section locks and having their actions recorded in the tournament log. (read more about the tournament log)
Section locks provide a way for tournament Creators to prevent accidental data loss and restrict the editing scope of Admins (read more about roles).
Sections that are locked cannot be edited; only the tournament Creator can apply or remove a section lock.
I recommend locking the Schedule, Fields, and Divisions sections after they have been set up. The information in those sections is not likely to change and accidentally deleting it could be potentially disastrous for your tournament (ie: deleting a Division will delete all Games played in that Division; deleting a Field will delete all Games played on that Field).
The tournament log tracks any substantial change to the tournament structure and shows the details of decisions made automatically by the system.
At first glance the messages in the log might seem pedantic, but they're critical for the public accountability of users making updates to a tournament. The log also shows decisions made by the System that effect the tournament structure. Here are some examples of tournament log messages:
[13:54:51] System replaced "Pool A, 1st place" with team Zombies in the Championship A Bracket bracket. [13:54:51] System replaced "Pool A, 3rd place" with team Disc Lickers in the Championship B Bracket bracket. [13:54:51] Jill updated game Zombies (7) vs Disc Lickers (4) in Pool A. [13:50:04] Joe updated game Squirrel Bombers (3) vs Homer (10) in Pool B.
The tournament creator can set a hashtag for the tournament on the Admin page. When Twitter updates are enabled, the site will syndicate certain log messages to @UltimateCentral with the tournament hastag. People can follow @UltimateCentral or the tournament hashtag and stay up-to-date with the latest results from the tournament.
Here are some examples of Tweets generated by the site:
This is one of the most powerful features of the site. There are three different ways to seed brackets that allow for almost any tournament format to be programmed into the system before any games are played.
First, you can select a team in a bracket to be "Winner of Quarter-finals A" or "Loser of Semi-finals B". When that game is finished, the system will automatically calculate the winning or losing team and advance them as expected. When this happens you will see a message in the tournament log that looks like "System replaced "Winner of Quarter-finals A" with team Beer Factor in the Championship bracket." You can use this feature to have losing teams drop down to a lower bracket. In fact, this same logic is how winning teams automatically advance in brackets.
Second, you can select a team in a bracket to be "Pool A, 2nd Place". When all the games in Pool A are finished (ie: have a status of "Final"), the system will calculate 2nd place for that pool and automatically fill that team into the bracket game. When this happens you will see a message in the tournament log that looks like "System replaced "Pool A, 2nd place" with team Karate Ostrich in the Championship bracket."
Finally, you can select a team in a bracket to be "Post Pool Play, 8th place". When all the games in all the pools in a division are finished (ie: all games in pools have a status of "Final"), the system will calculate the record of the teams in that division based on the pool games they played and fill them into brackets accordingly. When this happens you will see a message in the tournament log that looks like "System replaced "Post Pool Place, 8th place" with team Hammer Down in the Championship bracket." Be careful mixing this with Pool Results; due to the special rules involved in calculating Pool Place, it's possible to double-book a team using these two methods. The system won't let this happen and it will throw an error in the log, but your tournament might hit an unfortunate snag.
If all of your pools are created and linked into your brackets and your bracket games have their field and round set up, the only thing you need to do on game day is record scores. Brackets will advance automatically as the games are completed and results will be calculated with every game update.
I agree; it's coming.
The nice thing about this feature is that it can be added retroactively.
I agree; it's coming.
Email me; I'll help you get set up.
I appreciate that :) You can send feedback here.
If you have nothing nice to say...
Just kidding - I want your feedback. Email me.