at all times<\/a>. The “trick” to staying up-to-date is to prepare as much of the information, including broadcasts, forms and FAQs in advance and stage them. This reduces the level of anxiety for your guest teams, increases their trust in the accuracy of your web site and reduces stress considerably for you, allowing you to spend more time in seeding and scheduling your guest teams more accurately and efficiently. The matrix below is merely an outline for events that happen through the eight phases of a tournament.<\/p>\nPhase I – Latency<\/h2>\n
Tournament<\/strong>
\nMake sure all information is up to date and reflects the status of the tournament. Get your sanctioning, put together a marketing plan and begin writing your broadcasts.<\/p>\nGuest Teams<\/strong>
\nGuest teams must likely are not thinking about your tournament as much as you are. Don’t worry; they will.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\nPhase II – Marketing<\/h2>\n
Tournament<\/strong>
\nBroadcast email messages to last year’s teams, let them know you are there for them.
\nPrepare and mail postcard marketing
\nMake sure your link on the association web site is up and working
\nAttend divisioning meetings and hand out marketing materials to potential guest teams.<\/p>\nGuest Teams<\/strong>
\nGuest teams are looking at the web site and deciding which tournaments they will be applying to. Teams are also looking at past team scores and standings.<\/p>\nPhase III – Applications<\/h2>\n
Tournament<\/strong>
\nApplications will be coming in. As they come in, you should look at them and begin to “seed” them into large groups (1, 5, 9, etc) Don’t worry about seeding precisely.
\nFront page breaking news, quick news and the scroll message should be updated to reflect the application phase.
\nTeams should be marked as they pay; messages should be going out to teams who have not yet sent in their check within the past 5-7 days.
\nTeams who apply should be getting information email messages at least every two weeks, to keep them informed.
\nFAQ postings accurate and timely. Prepare FAQs for registration, etc.
\nForms for registration should be prepared and finalized, including the shirt design.<\/p>\nGuest Teams<\/strong>
\nGuest teams are logging into their application and keeping track of their fees being paid, rosters received, travel, etc.
\nGuest teams should be encouraged to keep their information accurate and up-to-date.
\nGuest teams will be able to change their application until the deadline, after which they will be able to only see their status.
\nAfter the deadline, all applications will be marked Waiting, in green.<\/p>\nPhase IV – Acceptance and Confirmation<\/h2>\n
Tournament<\/strong>
\nTurn off the application FAQs and turn on the registration and confirmation ones.
\nCheck all the teams that you are accepting in one action using the “mark” tool. The guest teams are monitoring their status almost every hour.
\nMake sure that ALL your registration forms have been placed on the web site.
\nChange the front page, Quick news.
\nSend an email to the guest teams letting them know they have been accepted and they must CONFIRM by logging into their application.<\/p>\nGuest Teams<\/strong>
\nGuest teams will log in using their TEAM ID NO that appears on the top of every email that is sent from the Applications Module.
\nTeams will log in, click on the “Click Here to Confirm” link and their application will be tagged as Confirmed and the date and time will be written as part of their record.
\nA menu of forms will then be presented to the team.
\nIf they need duplicate forms, they should log in again using their TEAM ID NO Instead of the link saying “Click Here to Confirm” it will say “Click here for duplicate forms”<\/p>\nPhase V – Scheduling<\/h2>\n
Tournament<\/strong>
\nBuild the list of fields
\nBuild the list of tournament divisions. If you don’t know all the divisions, build at least one per age group.
\nBuild a list of winner placeholders. Be sure to include Wild Cards and qtr finals and semi final winners, if necessary.
\nMake final decisions on the team seeds and mark accordingly.
\nPair teams with the scheduling tool. If you use an off-line scheduling system, be sure that your on-line schedule matches. When you are done, publish your schedule. Be sure to update the schedule using the schedule tool if things change.
\nBroadcast that the schedule has been posted. Change your front page, quick news to reflect your status.
\nMake sure all teams have paid.
\nEmail broadcasts should be going out regularly, but not too often as to create fatigue. During the last 2 weeks, they should be going out at least once a week. The week leading up to the tournament is your biggest pre-event traffic week, with heavy hits on restaurants and hotels.
\nWrite your THANK YOU MESSAGE NOW!! You will be too tired to think of anything on that last day.<\/p>\nGuest Teams<\/strong>
\nGuest teams will pick up their schedule from the web site.
\nRegistration materials completed.
\nTeams are checking out places to eat, entertainment, especially during the last week leading up to your tournament.<\/p>\nPhase VI – Registration<\/h2>\n
Tournament<\/strong>
\nCreate and communicate an online registration program<\/a>.
\nReceive and approve registration materials.<\/p>\nGuest Teams<\/strong>
\nTeams prepare and send their official registration paperwork.<\/p>\nPhase VII – Tournament Play<\/h2>\n
Tournament<\/strong>
\nScores updated through the admin section.
\nAs winners emerge, change the team pairings on the schedule.
\nUpdate the front page, quick news to reflect the current action. Plug vendors at the tournament, etc. People are visiting the web site during the event.<\/p>\nGuest Teams<\/strong>
\nGuest teams are checking out scores, DEALS, information FROM THE SIDELINES as the games are going on for updated information.<\/p>\nPhase VIII – Post Tournament<\/h2>\n
Tournament
\nPost your thank you message up on the front page.
\nAUDIT your scores. Make sure they are complete and accurate.
\nTake care of the lost and found items. Mention the lost and found page in your final broadcast.
\nMove into Phase I for next year<\/p>\n
Guest Teams<\/strong>
\nTeams will get home, check out scores until about 2-3 days after the tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This page is mostly for new tournament directors who want to know how to get on track and stay on track quickly without having the expense of trial and error. We will update it from time to time to reflect current trends and what we see soccer tournaments do that works well. The goal is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-960","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tourneycentral.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tourneycentral.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tourneycentral.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tourneycentral.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tourneycentral.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tourneycentral.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tourneycentral.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}