Primary School League Management

Like many voluntary groups, coordinating the preparation and execution of community events rests with one busy individual, who willingly gives their time and patience to ensuring that it runs smoothly and is a success.

Running primary school leagues in Kildare was no different. Stephen O’Brien is Fixtures Secretary with Cumann na mBunscoil Cill Dara and with his committee, spent evenings and weekends organising the CmnB leagues for 80 primary schools across 4 codes, 18 divisions with over 160 fixtures. Late registrations were unavoidable and often meant starting from scratch. Publishing to the website and distributing the draws only added to the workload. And once the competitions were underway, almost as much effort again was spent on chasing results, updating standings and once more, keeping the website current.

This work all happened after a full day in the classroom, and the effort went unseen and unnoticed by most other teachers, parents and even other committee members. It’s only a passion for the games that provided the motivation and drive, every year. But something had to change, and a fortuitous introduction to Surpass Sport Systems brought just that.

Now preparing their third season using Leagues, much of the admin load has simply disappeared. Leagues brings a balanced mix of automation for scheduling fixtures with the ability to manually override, for example, the venue for a game. Accepting a late registration is quick and easy, with draws and fixtures quickly rebuilt & polished. Coordinators can easily be assigned to Divisions, and the complete competition structure can be published to the website in a matter of minutes.

Once the competition is underway, Division Coordinators can update their fixtures, and importantly, they can record the results directly, including noshows and walk-overs. Standing tables are automatically updated and when all round-robin fixtures are played, playoffs for semi-finals and finals are generated.

"Surpass Sport Sytems have saved hours of my time, even just considering the website updates. I'm really looking forward to fewer text messages, WhatsApp chats and phone calls, as division coordinators enter match results directly themselves. They can just as easily reschedule a match for another day or change the hosting school, if needed", says Stephen O'Brien, Cumann na mBunscoil, Cill Dara.

Leagues is built on Surpass Sport Systems and is designed to support the actions and responsibilities associated with voluntary leagues, supporting delegated roles, timely reminders and top-level league management. It also offers optional direct and secure integration with teams involved in the competition using TeamsApp, where fixtures are scheduled to the team, changes are automatically synchronised and, in so doing, can also eliminate the need to share player names and date’s of birth on printed team sheets, offering instead validation against league entry requirements.

Leagues is ideal for any School, Club or Organisation running roundrobin and / or knock out competitions, especially for underage sports teams

Tasked with the running of a league or cup competition, or even a blitz for a day? Talk to us today on how our Leagues App will simplify your job, from start to end