Support for the MSTW Schedules & Scoreboards plugin is being phased out. The plugin will continue to be maintained on the wordpress.org plugin site in support of legacy users, all new users should go with the MSTW League Manager plugin, which is very actively maintained. Legacy users of Schedules & Scoreboards should also consider migration to League Manager for improved features and support.

It is still available on the WordPress.org site, and the documentation will be available on this site. So it can still be used, and it will work with future versions of WordPress for some time. If there are bugs, I will look into them. However, the plugin will not be enhanced in any way.

While the name might sound like overkill for small, simple sites, it really isn’t. While League Manager provides more features and advanced features for larger, regional sites, it can also be used just like Schedules & Scoreboards for simpler sites without the need for advanced features. So there is really no need to use MSTW Schedules & Scoreboards or continue to support it (at the expense of the other MSTW plugins).

“It is what it is.”

The MSTW Schedules & Scoreboards plugin will continue to be maintained on the wordpress.org plugin site in support of new and legacy users. However there is no plan to add new features in the near future.

It will still be available on the WordPress.org site, and the documentation will be available on the shoalsummitsolutions.com site. It will work with future versions of WordPress into the future. Bugs will definitely be addressed. However at this time no enhancements to the plugin are planned.

New users should consider the MSTW League Manager plugin, which is actively maintained and enhanced with new features. Legacy users of Schedules & Scoreboards may also want consider migration to League Manager for improved features and support.

While the name “League Manager” might sound like overkill for smaller, simple, one-team or one-school sites, it really isn’t. While League Manager provides more features and advanced features for larger, regional sites, it can also be used just like Schedules & Scoreboards for simpler sites without the need for advanced features. Feel free to contact me about the options here.

Version 2.10 of MSTW League Manager and League Manager Add-ons has been released.

What’s New

The primary new functionality is improved handling of Overtime Games when Standings are being auto-calculated using MTW League Manager Add-ons. In fact, until this version, there was no way to indicate that a game ended in overtime so the auto-fill of standings could process it correctly.

Several new videos are available on League Manager, including how to handle overtime games with and without the MSTW League Manager plugin. Visit shoalsummitsolutions.com to view them.

Other than that, you can read about the minor changes in the Change Logs in the readme files or on the website – MSTW League Manager Change Log or MSTW League Manager Add-ons Change Log.

Installing MSTW League Manager Add-ons

MSTW Premium Plugins are now easier to update because recent versions of the plugins are always available on the shoalsummitsolutions.com website under Store -> My Plugins. This video shows how to get the premium plugins without digging out the link in your purchase confirmation e-mail.

Overtime Game Management with League Manager

Prior to Version 2.10, the only way to accurately display standings tables was to manually update a league’s records. This video shows a few tricks that may come in handy.

Overtime Game Management with League Manager Add-ons

Prior to Version 2.10, there was no way to indicate that a game was an overtime game, so the Auto-fill standings feature in MSTW League Manager Add-ons could accurately compute points in standings. Now you can specify overtime games, but there are still some subtleties. Should overtime wins be shown simply as wins? Or should they be shown in as overtime wins? What about overtime loses? This video shows how to deal with some of these issues.

League Manager Admin Roles

MSTW Admin Roles for team, school, and league admins were introduced in League Manager Add-ons version 2.9, and improved in version 2.10. This video shows how these roles are set up so the site maintenance responsibilities can be distributed across trusted users.

Head-to-Head Results as a Tiebreaker

Head-to-head results can not be selected as a tie-breaker in the Standings Settings, because three and four way head-to-head tiebreakers become pretty gnarly pretty quickly. However, this video discusses some ways to create head-to-head tiebreakers.

Venue Groups

Venue groups have been round for a long time. This video shows how they provide the potential for better organization and display of venues.

The MSTW Schedule Builder builds ‘balanced’ round robin schedules for leagues and tournaments for up to six teams. NOTE: This plugin REQUIRES the MSTW LEAGUE MANAGER PLUGIN (version 2.5 for higher) to handle the creation of leagues, seasons, and teams.

Depending on the size of the league or tournament, the number of permutations and combinations of teams, time slots, dates, and locations can be huge. The simple (old) method of always having a single team always playing in the same time slot or position is not always the way to go. It can, and does, create problems with players, coaches, and fans because it can be inherently unfair. The issue is the quality of the first position time slot. If the time, location, and/or quality of the facility is desirable, then the team that’s always scheduled there will be advantaged, and the other teams will not share equal playing time at the desirable facility. If another time and location is less desirable (i.e., inconvenient time, long distance, poor quality of facility, etc.), then a team that is always scheduled to play there will be disadvantaged.

These issues and the inherent inequity are minimized by balanced schedules. Round robin scheduling includes a date, time, location, home and visitor teams, and game ID for each game. A quality schedule should distribute and balance the dates/days, times, locations, home and visiting teams of its games as equitably as possible.

Future releases will handle larger leagues and tournaments, eventually up to 32 teams, double round robin (home-and-home) schedules, and field assignments for tournaments played on multiple fields at one facility.