Schedules are given for 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24 and 26 teams - just click on the number you want. (A schedule is also given for 7 teams playing two games a day.)
You can now download the entire spreadsheet in Excel format.
There is also a version of the spreadsheet by a gentleman called Russell, who sent it to me a few years ago. (Sorry, I lost his email and so only have the name of the spreadsheet to go on!) This has a neat feature that enables you to quickly convert team letters to team names.
Every team is assigned a letter as the team name and every field time slot is assigned a number. All you have to do is substitute the team name for the designated letter and the time and field for the time slot number and, presto, a schedule!
We don't pretend that this is better than some of the software packages out there, but it works and it's free.
Every schedule is designed so that every team plays every other team. With a big division it is probable that the season won't permit this unless games are twice a week. I will make up schedules for other numbers upon request.
Grid 1 is a grid in which each team can see who its opponent is in any given week. Grid 2 shows each team's opponent, week by week. Grid 3 shows the weekly match-ups, with weeks on the x axis and time slots on the y axis. Grid 4 is Grid 3 transposed, with weeks on the y axis and time slots on the x axis.
The four grids yield identical results. Grids 1-3 can be stretched out on the x-axis (Grid 4 on the y-axis) as many extra weeks as the regular reason requires. The extra weeks are simply a repetition of the first n weeks, where n+1 is the number of teams in the division (if there is an even number) or n+2 is the number of teams (if there is an odd number).
I recommend you give coaches schedules based on Grid 3 or 4. Grids 1 and 2 are for scheduler's use to see quickly who is playing whom and in what week.
Easy - just make week 1 the first game of the week, week 2 the second game and so on.
Alternative 1. Take the grid for the number of teams plus one. Allocate one of the team letters to "Bye". The team playing the "Bye" team gets a bye that week.
Alternative 2. Take the team and the two teams immediately following (or preceding) on the schedule and play a round robin of half games (A v B, A v C, B v C). B is the bye team, and has to wait for a half game between halves. But better than sitting out a week!
Examples are given with both byes and round robins of schedules for 7 and 9 teams. We can make up schedules for different numbers on request.
It can be done! Suppose you have seven teams. Take the schedule for weeks 1 and 2. Have the two bye teams play each other. Repeat for weeks 3 and 4 and weeks 5 and 6. You may have to make some game time adjustments to avoid teams play too close together. Here is an example.
The schedules do not give game times. That's obviously a matter for each region. What Grids 3 and 4 do is to give match-ups with numbered time slots, which you simply replace with the actual times.
If there is an odd number of teams and you choose to do round robins rather than byes, the time slot needs to be three halves, designated on the third schedule as RR1, RR2 and RR3.
One thing to watch out for is balancing the number of very early morning or late afternoon games. Grids 3 and 4 do this as much as possible by placing teams in varied time slots. This is not so much of a problem if you play on more than one field per division.
Grids 3 and 4 also show home and away teams (home first). So far as possible, Grids 3 and 4 balance the number of home and away games. However, if you only get part way through, the number of home and away games may sometimes get slightly out of balance and this has to be fixed manually.
Our spreadsheets are really designed for league play, although with a bit of imagination you can use them for tournaments. You could try a nice set of free spreadsheets for tournament scheduling by Infosports.
Legal Stuff
© 1997-2018 American Youth Soccer Organization Region 76 and Michael Karlin
Permission is given to copy or download the templates and use them for purposes of making up schedules of games. Youth sports organizations - no charge. All others, please send a check for $5 per set of templates or $25 for all of the templates to AYSO Region 76, P.O. Box 1761, Beverly Hills, California 90213. Permission is also given to link to this site but not within a frame or in any other manner which gives any suggestion or impression, however remote, that the templates or this site are the work of anyone other than the copyright holders.
While we have tried very hard to avoid clerical errors (such as teams playing twice in a week or not at all) and especially to ensure consistency between each of the four grids, it is possible that there are some errors and inconsistencies. Please let me know and I will fix them for you and everyone else. I can be reached by e-mail at mkarlin@ayso76.org.
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