
Nothing is worse than winning a match, then before you can issue a challenge, they are challenging you again - or who brings the balls, or what happens if no one responds to a challenge. One of the most frustrating components of a ladder for a player, is when there is not enough rules in place to make the ladder fun and enjoyable. They will love the fact they are not waiting on you to get off your butt and enter this results so they can challenge someone else.
TABLE TENNIS LADDER TEMPLATE SOFTWARE
But it goes back to burn-out… Find yourself some nice automated ladder software ( ), setup your ladders, and offload the work to them.

While most ladder admins are control freaks (just kidding), they often are hesitant about giving control over entering match results to the players. It also allows a player who had a bad start or is just beginning a chance to “restart” fresh with the promise of a new season. Even if it’s just a playoff with the top 4 at the end of the season, it’s something to play for. There has to be an end-game, a light at the end of the tourney, something that a player is playing for. Imagine if we watched our favorite sports teams play a season that never ended? What would be the fun in that? While a never-ending ladder may seems easier for an administrator since there are no end-of-season playoffs or tournament to worry about – this is sheer boredom for your participants. A great alternative is to invest in some ladder software (6. Even though this seems like a great and the easiest way to get started, don’t go down this rabbit hole, unless you want to be sending an email a month from now apologizing to your ladder participants that you are shutting it down. More than 90% of ladder administrators trying to do this will be burned out in less than a month and leave the excited ladder participants hanging like a used towel. Really? You are going to try to keep up with a ladder and all the many results using Excel or Google Sheets? Not a good idea.

Not only does this take care of the scheduling problem, but allows people to get to meet new playing partners.ĥ. A better way to run a fun and competitive doubles ladders is allow players to hook up and play with different partners and then rank everyone individually. To try to line up schedules with four different players is almost impossible. The single most important reason that doubles ladders fail is one word – SCHEDULING. Requiring the same team in a Doubles Ladderĭoubles is obviously played at a higher % than singles at most clubs. The social ladders are great to attract new players to your club or organization without the intimidation factor.Ĥ. My advice if you have enough players, is to break your ladders into two categories – Social & Competitive. While competition is what makes successful ladders a blast to play in, if they get over competitive, then your players who are playing for the social and exercise will quickly lose interest. Be very strict with this and make sure all your ladder participants know that after a given period of time with no activity, they will be dropped and eventually removed from the ladder.

By “stale”, i’m referring to the player, who never responds to or issues challenges over time. 95% of the reason ladders fail is because stale players are allowed to stay in and take up spots. To run a successful ladder, you can’t always be the good guy. People naturally want to fit in, not be embarrassed or intimidated. So placing a player that just started playing among those that are experienced and skilled players will be the quickest way to receive that dreaded withdrawal email. Naturally, competitors will lose interest in something very quickly if there they feel there is no way to reach the top. While this sounds good in principle and alleviates quite a few headaches in terms of managing multiple ladders – doing this will kill your ladder participation rate. Combining all skill levels into one big ladder
