How to plan a schedule for martial arts competition?

Creating a schedule for a competition is one of the most important steps in organizing martial arts events such as BJJ, MMA, or wrestling. Proper preparation will ensure that the competition runs smoothly and without delays.

Running an event

The MartialMatch application is quite flexible when it comes to creating a schedule. Planning the schedule is one of the stages of organizing competitions, these are:

• registration of competitors
• brackets
• mats
• planning: one or more schedules
• assigning brackets to mats in the selected schedule,
• generating fights in schedules based on brackets,
• conducting fights.

The important decision we have to make is the number of schedules.

• Each schedule contains its fights, brackets, and mats.
• One schedule is isolated from another, which means that fights from one schedule cannot be assigned to mats from another schedule.
• At the same time, we can only conduct fights from one active schedule.

Adding schedules

Schedule for competitions are added under the Organization tab, and then Manage schedule.

We will see:

It's up to us how many schedules we create and how we assign brackets to them.

• Events can be divided into several days. "Day 1", "Day 2".
• If we have one-day events, one schedule is enough.
• There is nothing stopping us from dividing one-day events into several schedules. We then conduct fights from one schedule, and then move on to the next.

We create a schedule by clicking Add new, then we provide the name and start of the schedule.

Planning the schedule

Next step is to assign brackets to mats in the selected schedule.

We click on the name of the schedule we want to edit. We will be taken to the schedule planning:

Planning the schedule consists of several steps:

• we choose the categories/brackets we want to assign to the mats,
• we select the target mats,
• (optionally) we choose the way in which one selected category is to be divided.

Choosing categories

The system allows you to easily select one or more categories at once that you want to assign to the mats.

We can scroll through the list and select categories one by one or use the search input, we can search for categories that interest us, and select them automatically.

Category search

In order to automatically select multiple categories, you should use the search input. We search for categories, enter keywords that are in the category name.

For example, having categories:

adult; white; -64 kg
adult; white; -70 kg
adult; white; -76 kg
...
adult; blue; -64 kg
adult; blue; -70 kg
adult; blue; -76 kg

If we want to assign white categories to the mats, just enter "white" in the search input, and the system will automatically find all categories that match this criteria.

Then click the Select visible button. This will cause the categories that are visible to be added to the selected categories.

If we delete the keyword from the search input, the system will display all available categories again, but only the previously selected ones will be highlighted.

In case we have selected too many categories, we can re-enter the keyword and deselect the categories that are not needed.

For example, the image above shows the selection of the master categories. If we enter master in the search input and click Deselect visible, the system will only deselect categories containing the keyword master.

Choosing mats

After selecting the categories, the system will display the available mats to which we can assign the categories. We can select multiple mats.

There are several variants according to which the system will then add categories:

• one or more categories + one mat: the system will simply add categories to the indicated mat,
• one category + multiple mats: among the selected mats, the system will add the category to the mat that is least loaded,
• multiple categories + multiple mats: the system will try to evenly distribute categories on selected mats so that each mat ends at the same time.

Adding categories

The last step is to choose which part of the bracket we want to assign to the mat.

At the moment, we can only divide categories into parts when we select one category. This is useful when, for example, the category is large and we want to conduct fights on several mats.

If we select more than one category, the system will automatically assign the entire category to the mat.

Additional option is the order of adding categories to mats:

• As marked — the system will add categories in a balanced way to the mats, in the same order as we marked them,
• Descending — if we have multiple selected categories, the largest categories will be added first,
• Ascending — in this case, the system will start with the smallest categories.

Adding ascending/descending applies only to selected categories. If we then select another set of categories, we can choose a different way of adding.

Example

For example, if we select the following categories in order from top to bottom:

Then the way they are added to the mats will be as follows:

As marked

Categories are added in a balanced way to the mats, in the same order as we marked them:

Descending

Categories are added from largest to smallest:

Ascending

Categories are added from smallest to largest:

Schedule preview

At the bottom of the page, we have access to the schedule preview, which is updated as categories are added to the mats.

The most important features are:

• the ability to drag categories to other mats,
• the ability to drag categories and change the order on one mat,
• showing potential conflicts that may occur in the schedule.

Conflicts in the schedule

The system displays potential conflicts that may occur in the schedule.

Conflicts may occur when the same competitor fights in two categories and when both categories have fights at the same time. This can lead to a situation where the competitor has to be on two mats at the same time 😁.

The system suggests that we pay attention to these conflicts and possibly move categories to other mats.

• To preview all conflicts, click on the warning above the mats.
• Clicking on the category that is in conflict, the system will highlight the categories that are in conflict with it and on which mats the conflict occurs.

Conflict time threshold is used to determine the time between categories for the system to consider a conflict. For example, if we set the threshold to 30 minutes, the system will show a conflict when fights from two categories start within 30 minutes of each other, and we have the same competitor in such categories.

Sharing the schedule

When we consider that all categories are assigned to the mats, and conflicts have been resolved, we can share the schedule with the competitors.

You can read more about this in the dedicated guide here.