Running a 455-Player Tournament with Players Entering Scores: What I Learned

Strategy, lessons, and troubleshooting from the Earth Day Open at Belknap Park

The Tournament at a glance

On April 24-26, my business partner and I directed the Earth Day Open Pickleball Tournament at Belknap Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan. With 455 players competing across 21 courts over three days, it was one of the largest tournaments our region has hosted — and the first to fully embrace Players Enter Scores along with auto-assigned courts.

The result? A tournament that ran remarkably smoothly, with fewer staff needed at the desk and far more time to actually engage with players. Even our 60+ divisions handled the technology like champs.

Here's how I set it up, what I'd do differently next time, and the troubleshooting tips that kept us moving.

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Players enter scores and fill empty courts

When you enable Players Enter Scores, players receive a text with a link to enter their own scores from their phone — no scorecards to deliver back to the tournament desk. Pair that with the system's Fill Empty Courts feature, and the tournament essentially runs itself: as scores are confirmed, the system automatically assigns the next match to the freed-up court and texts the players to head over.

The setup itself is fairly quick and texting does need to be on. For the full walkthrough, see How to Enable Player Scoring and Auto-Run Your Tournament.

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Strategy: Building court "pods" for skill-appropriate play

Belknap Park has 21 courts, but they aren't all created equal. The back courts sit closer together, and rather than each being individually fenced, they share fencing in pairs. I wanted to keep our higher-level players (4.5+, sometimes 4.0 if it allowed) off those back courts, where the tighter spacing could affect quality of play.

To do this, I divided the facility into two pods:

• Pod A — 12 courts: Courts 1-6, 11, 13, and 14-17. These were our front courts and premium challenge courts. Court 12 was excluded entirely because it served as a pass-through, our medal area, and a few vendors set up there.
• Pod B — 8 courts: Courts 7-10 and 18-21 (the back courts).
  
  

Every event was set to run on "next available courts," and then I used the Manage Event Court Counts & Start Times tab inside the tournament menu to specify which courts each bracket could play on. I had a printed sheet of every bracket and its start time next to me throughout the setup — that paper trail made the process much more manageable.

For scheduling, I aimed for roughly 13-15 courts' worth of teams on Pod A's 12 courts, and 10 courts' worth of teams on Pod B's 8 courts. All 4.5 and above divisions played exclusively on Pod A. Some lower divisions played on Pod B, and a few divisions were left on "first available court" to fill any gaps.

On tournament day, this worked extremely well.

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Reserving premium courts for Finals

For our open divisions, we wanted finals played on courts 5 and 6 — our challenge courts. As brackets approached the semifinals, I went into Manage Court Counts and Start Times and reduced the open division's available courts to only 5 and 6. At the same time, I went into every other bracket playing in that window and removed courts 5 and 6 from their available lists.

As long as I saved these changes before the system's next auto-assignment cycle, the courts were reliably reserved for the finals — no manual intervention needed.

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Three tabs you'll want open

For anyone running a tournament this way, I strongly recommend keeping three browser tabs open at all times:

• Court Desk
• Live Console
• Manage Court Counts and Start Times
  
  

You'll be moving between them constantly. Having them ready saves real time.

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Lessons Learned

Choose your auto-confirm window thoughtfully

The Minutes until auto-confirm setting deserves more thought than it tends to get. In smaller tournaments where we'd used Players Enter Scores in the past, we'd set simply an auto-confirm on the score. However, we ran into a recurring issue: players simply didn't pay attention if their score submitted or not. The pattern looked like this — the winning team entered the score and pressed submit, perhaps looked up, and looked back to see the score didn't submit. In reality, it was their next match, and they "re-entered" the score for their next match. As you can imagine, this messed things up a bit.

We landed on a 1-minute auto-confirm window and never looked back. We instructed the winning team to enter the score, and the opposing team then had one minute to confirm — after which the system auto-confirmed. We asked opponents to confirm right away to keep things moving, but the 1-minute floor meant that even when players got distracted, the match would close and the next assignment would go out within a minute. The window also eliminates the "wait, where did my score go?" confusion entirely, because players can't progress to their next match scorecard until the current one is confirmed or auto-confirmed.

We encountered zero issues with 1-minute til auto-confirm across the entire Earth Day Open. I'd recommend starting there whether you're newer to players entering scores, or well versed.

Manual court assignments require a manual text

At one point, I had two courts open in Pod A but two teams waiting whose division was assigned to Pod B. I manually reassigned them through the court desk — but I forgot to update the text message that would direct them to their new court. Instead, the system told them to come to the tournament desk for a scorecard. They then couldn't enter their scores afterward and had to make a second trip back.

The better workflow: Go into Manage Court Counts and Start Times, temporarily include the open Pod A courts for the waiting bracket, return to the Live Console and click "fill any empty courts," and then go back and re-exclude those courts from that bracket. A few extra clicks, but a much smoother experience for the players.

Pad your start times — and account for warm-up culture at higher levels

If you're scheduling more teams than courts (we ran 23-25 teams across 20 active courts), be generous with the gap between bracket start times. Tight scheduling will catch up with you.

This bit me on Saturday. I didn't intentionally over-schedule, but our men's open and 4.5 divisions ran significantly longer than planned. Part of the reason: higher-level players love their warm-up. The 4.0-5.0 crowd will happily spend 15 minutes warming up before a match — even when they've just walked off another court. That time wasn't built into our schedule, and the matches themselves were running about 40-45 minutes each rather than the scheduled 30 for a game to 15. In a 24-team bracket, those extra 10-15 minutes per match add up fast, and by mid-day we had a real court jam when the final round of brackets arrived.

Two things would have helped: clearer communication to players about how much warm-up time is expected, and more realistic time allocations for the highest-level matches. I spent most of the congested window watching the court desk like a hawk, constantly re-adjusting who played where so courts could free up faster. It was stressful, but careful, bracket-by-bracket attention got us through about 90 minutes of congestion and let the last start time run smoothly. We thanked the brackets that bore the brunt of the wait, and to their credit, we heard remarkably few complaints.

Account for walk time across a large facility

A player finishing on court 6 who's then assigned to court 11 needs a few minutes just to get there. One of the great things about Players Enter Scores is that there are no scorecards to get back to the TD desk — but you still need to factor walking time into your scheduling.

Be specific about wait times

We didn't tell players exactly how long to wait if their opponent didn't show, and one team waited 30 minutes before coming to the desk. A clearly posted rule — "If your opponent isn't on court within X minutes, come to the tournament desk to have them paged" — would have solved this immediately.

Over-communicate during weather delays

When a brief weather delay hit, I sent a manual text letting players know they could resume play once they were comfortable with the dryness of their courts. Some players assumed they'd get a specific system text directing them back to their courts — like the original assignment message — and waited for it. Adding a single line such as "You will not receive a further text. Please return to your court and begin when ready" would have prevented the confusion entirely.

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Troubleshooting: Texting issues

The Players Enter Scores system relies on text messaging, so we put real effort into making sure texts actually reached players.

Ahead of the tournament, we communicated clearly that texting had to be turned on. We also asked players to log in to check their country code (surprisingly, there were several people who didn't have the correct ones), and asked players to add the texting phone numbers as a contact to help prevent it from going to spam. At check-in, we verified phone numbers and confirmed texting was enabled — and even then, about 50 players still hadn't turned it on.

For players who didn't receive texts, we showed them how to follow their match status through their Pickleball.com account.

For iPhone users specifically, spam filtering was a frequent culprit. To check: open iMessages, tap the three-line menu in the upper right, and look in the "Spam" folder. You can also adjust filtering preferences via "Manage Filters" in that same menu — we recovered missing tournament texts there more than once.

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The Bottom Line

We received glowing compliments on the text messaging system. Players loved it. Even our 60+ bracket embraced it without complaint. The tournament ran extremely smoothly — no scores for our TD team to enter, fewer staff needed to manage operations, overall less stress, and far more time to engage with the people we were there to serve. In fact, this tournament generated more thank-yous than any event we've ever run.

For anyone considering Players Enter Scores for a large event: yes, do it. Plan your court strategy carefully, build a few extra minutes into everything, communicate clearly with your players, and keep those three tabs open.

You won't regret it.