Best Practice Recommendations for Setup

[Kevin Hemphill]

Good morning,

I am fairly new to this very POWERFUL plugin, which as I’ve stated in previous forum posts that I think it is awesome!

I’m looking for best practice recommendations on how to best setup the plugin for our purposes. Here’s what we’re looking to do:

BACKGROUND:
This plugin will be used (at least to begin with) to manage scores, rankings, etc. for multiple local high schools (9) for a local media outlet to utilize for broadcasts, etc. It will be used to manage this for multiple sports throughout the season. However, we are starting first with Football.

STRUCTURE:
As with many other states, mine (Georgia) has a high school association (GHSA). Underneath that title, schools are broken out into various classifications and then from there each classification has multiple regions. For example:

Class A Public
— Region 1-A Public
— Region 2-A Public

Class AA
— Region 1-AA
— Region 2-AA

… etc. … up to class AAAAAAA.

Additionally, its important to note that while there are regional titles to be awarded, the state championships for each sport are awarded at the class level.

CURRENT SETUP:
Currently I have setup the following leagues:
— GHSA league
— All the classes as leagues separately (A-AAAAAAA)
— All the regions within each class as separate leagues (1-A Public up to 8-AAAAAAA)

I have set each league to All Sports and for the 2021 season.

I have added each school we cover along with the schools that they are facing based on their respective schedules.

I have also uploaded each team (NOT roster yet) to the teams section. Since it appears you have to have a separate team for each sport, I’ve set these teams up as name of the school followed by football (i.e. North Springs Football). I’ve assigned each team to the GHSA league as well as their respective class and region leagues as well.

I’m at the point where I want to put in games, but this is where I’m running into some hiccups and confusion. See below.

DILEMMAS/QUESTIONS:
One major dilemma I am having is that the 9 schools we cover are across 5 different regions and classifications. They also each have non-region games and even some cross-classification games. Therefore:

1) Since games can only be tied to one specific league, if the teams are in two different classifications or even regions, how should I handle that? Should it be assigned to the home team’s league, or should I go “up” a level to class in general or (in the case of cross-classification games) set it to GHSA?

2) Based on that question, we want to be able to display standings appropriately at all the league levels, so if the teams are in two different leagues and/or classes, will their record set appropriately and the stats show up appropriately?

3) Since we are looking to expand beyond football as the school year goes on, will we need to create a separate team per school per sport (i.e North Springs Women’s Basketball, North Springs Lacrosse, etc.)?

4) Additionally, will we probably need to create additional leagues for each sport? All of our schools keep the same regions and classes across all sports, but do I have to create, for example “GHSA Football”, “AA Basketball”, “5-AAAA Soccer”?

I know this is a lengthy post with a lot of details and questions, but I want to make sure I’m setting this up correctly from the get-go and not having to go back and redo a bunch of work.

Any help, feedback, ideas, best practices are welcome!

Thanks,
Kevin

[Mark]

Hey Kevin,
Wow! Good luck! I see you’ve been thinking about this a lot. Lot’s of good questions here. Unlike the typical e-mail thread, each thread in support forums is intended to address a single question, issue, or problem. One that hopefully has some commonality. At least that’s the theory. That allows other users to FIND things and ask further questions about the same topic. More importantly, I can find things and answer the questions once for all.

I am happy to help you with some of this, but what you have here is really an e-mail thread. Your challenges are far from yours alone. I have addressed a number of this issues in my consulting work for customers with similar websites.

So I’m going to close this thread while inviting you to email me (mark@shoalsummitsolutions.com) and perhaps we can get started on some of this.

Regards,
-Mark

[Author]

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