In today’s post we’ll walk through how to build a weekly tennis ladder for a group of players. We’ll do it in Google Sheets, because we want players to be able to input the scores from their matches every time they play.
Each week we want players to enter in their scores, then move players up or down depending on if they won or lost, and then assign the players a new match for the next week.
Spreadsheet Inputs
We want a signup tab for players to enter in their name, contact information, and tennis skill level (We’ll use the NTRP rating system).
We’ll want to have a place each week for players to enter in who won and their match score (We’ll get to this later as we build the spreadsheet).
Here’s what we have so far:
Spreadsheet Outputs
First we sort the list by NTRP Rating and then add a new tab to paste the names in. For the first week’s match, we have #1 play #2, #3 play #4 and so on. We use the (semi) elegant formula isodd() to assign the matches with one formula pasted throughout. We use the next column to allow the players to check off who won, and then enter the score:
Then we add a column for week 2’s new rankings. Whoever wins moves up a rung, and whoever loses moves down. We use slightly different formulas for every other square to adjust the ladder for week 2. It’s easiest to just check out the spreadsheet yourself:
Our logic will be such that if you’re at the top and win, you get a bye and if you’re at the bottom and lose you get a bye so that the counting works out. We have to do slightly different logic and formatting every other week due to the top player in the ladder alternating between a bye and having a match.
After a little elbow grease and some formatting, here’s how our spreadsheet looks:
You can download the spreadsheet here: Google Sheets Tennis Ladder Spreadsheet
Remember: to use it you have to go to File –> Save a Copy. Then save a copy in your own Google Drive. Set the read/write permissions so anyone in your ladder or anyone with the link can read or edit. Hopefully, you don’t invite any sore losers who delete the whole spreadsheet!