League scheduling software
Lacrosse league scheduling software: box and field seasons on borrowed floors and fields
This page is for lacrosse clubs and leagues choosing lacrosse league scheduling software, box and field. The method works with any tool, including a spreadsheet; the product section comes after.
Starter is free for clubs with up to 10 teams.
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A lacrosse season on borrowed floors and fields
0:00 By the end of this video, you will know how to build a lacrosse league season around the arena floor time and the fields you borrow. Box and field divisions, one calm plan. Every game fits the hours you hold, with room for the dates an arena or a field takes back. We will gather your inputs, turn floor and field hours into game slots, work through a box division and a field division, check the draft before anyone sees it, and plan for closures. Then we show how Play 2 Earn Sports helps.
What makes lacrosse scheduling different?
0:30 Lacrosse runs two kinds of season. Box lacrosse is played indoors on an arena floor with boards. Field lacrosse is played outdoors on a field. Many clubs run both, with different teams and different dates.
0:44 Box floor time is usually borrowed once the ice comes out for the season. It arrives by the week, by the hour, and it is often the club's single largest constraint. Build on confirmed hours, and ask the arena early. Field lacrosse shares its fields with soccer, football or baseball, so your hours may be short and they may change. Build on confirmed times, and keep one or two spare dates.
Gather your lacrosse season inputs
1:09 Start with four inputs. Teams per division, the floor and field hours you really hold, your season dates, and the dates each team cannot play. Get them on one page before you build. Then write your rules down.
1:23 Games per team, game length, earliest and latest start, changeover time and how many officials each division needs. One page is enough.
A worked example
1:31 Here is a typical example. It is illustrative, not a specific league. A community club runs a box division on one arena floor every Saturday morning, in a four-hour window, and a field division on two shared fields on Sundays. Four one-hour slots fit that window: nine, ten, eleven and twelve.
1:52 That is four games a Saturday on one floor, with the changeover inside each hour. The box division has eight teams. A single round robin is twenty-eight games, in seven rounds of four. One round a Saturday means the box season takes seven Saturdays.
2:08 Add two make-up Saturdays near the end, and the box season is nine Saturdays in all. It fits the floor exactly, so hold those spare dates for a closure. The field division is smaller. Six teams play fifteen games in five rounds of three, across two shared fields on Sunday mornings. Each round uses three of the six slots, so a make-up game can share the morning.
Check the lacrosse draft before you publish
2:32 Now check the draft before anyone sees it. Count rounds against your play dates, check every team, and check every floor and field for two games in the same place at once.
How Play 2 Earn Sports helps
2:43 Now, how Play 2 Earn Sports helps. The league builds the season with round robin, divisions, home and away balance, team availability and venue-conflict checks. A floor or team booked twice is flagged. Clubs set each venue's availability and date-specific exceptions, and block holidays, closures and tournament weekends on their teams, venues and fields.
3:07 The league sets the allowed days and the earliest and latest start times. The league can regenerate the draft until it publishes. After that, a published schedule is not regenerated over. Moving one game runs the same clash checks.
When a lacrosse game moves
3:21 When a published, upcoming league game moves, a notice is queued for both clubs' staff, affected coaches, rostered players, linked parents and any assigned referee with an account, and updates go to existing team chats. Email and push depend on each account's settings. The league assigns one referee to each league game, with sport, level and availability checks, and the referee accepts, declines or hands the game back. Your assignor builds the rest of the crew in the way they already do.
Try it with your own lacrosse floors and fields
3:51 Count your hours, make the pairings, give each round a play date and hold your make-up dates. The worked example, the template and the checklist are on the page linked in the description. Try it with your own floors and fields: Starter is free for clubs with up to 10 teams. Thanks for watching.
What makes a lacrosse league schedule different
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Two seasons, two spaces
Box lacrosse is played indoors on an arena floor with boards. Field lacrosse is played outdoors on a field. Many clubs run both, with different teams and different dates.
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Box floor time is borrowed, usually after the ice season
In many arenas the floor is free once the ice comes out for the spring and summer. Floor time is booked by the week, by the hour, and it is often the club's single largest constraint.
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Field lacrosse shares its fields
A field season usually sits alongside soccer, football or baseball, on the same shared grass or turf, so your hours may be short and may change.
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Hours arrive per week, not for the season
A floor slot or a field slot is given one week at a time, and a school or municipal event can take a date back. Build on confirmed hours, and keep spare dates.
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Changeover time on a shared floor
Boards, benches and the goal area take time to set and clear. Measure your changeover once and build it into each slot.
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Small-sided divisions
Younger field divisions often play small-sided games on a smaller field, which can let one full field hold two games. Check your league's rulebook for each age group.
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Officials work in a small crew
Lacrosse games usually take more than one official. Plan your officials by the game and by the hour, and confirm with your assignor how many each division needs.
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Travel between two spaces
A club with a box team and a field team may hold both a floor slot and a field slot in the same week, so watch a family's whole week, not just one division.
Step 1
Gather four inputs before you place a game
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Teams per division
Keep box and field as separate divisions, and split by age group. Fix the final counts by a set date, so the schedule is built once.
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The hours you really hold
For every arena floor and every field, write the days, the start and end times, whether it is indoor or outdoor, and whether it changes by date. For a box floor, note the changeover your arena allows. For a field, note whether lights are on and when they switch off.
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Season dates
First and last play date, plus the dates with no games: holidays, school events and any tournament weekend. For box, note the week the floor becomes available.
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Team unavailability
Ask every club for the dates its teams cannot play, on one form, by one deadline.
Then write down your rules: games per team, game length, earliest and latest start, how many games a team may play in one day, and how many officials each division needs.
Step 2
Turn floor and field hours into game slots
A slot is the game window plus the changeover. Measure both once in your own club.
Illustrative example, not a specific league.
| Division | Space | Game window (with warm-up) | Changeover | Slots on one date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Box under-15 | One arena floor | 1 hour | inside the hour | 4 in a four-hour floor window, for example 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00 |
| Field under-13 | Two shared fields | 50 minutes | 10 minutes | 3 per field, so 6 across two fields |
For a box season, the arena's floor window is the whole season's shape: four one-hour slots a week means four games a week on that floor. For a field season, the number of fields you hold is the number that matters most, because each field adds its own slots.
Worked example
A box lacrosse division and a field division in one club
Illustrative example, not a specific league.
A community club runs two lacrosse divisions on borrowed space. The box division plays on one arena floor every Saturday morning, in a four-hour window. The field division plays on two shared fields on Sunday mornings.
What each division needs. A single round robin with n teams needs n × (n − 1) ÷ 2 games.
| Division | Teams | Games each | Games in total | Rounds | Games per round |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Box under-15 | 8 | 7 | 28 | 7 | 4 |
| Field under-13 | 6 | 5 | 15 | 5 | 3 |
What the spaces hold.
| Division | Space and slots | Slots per play date | Slots over the season |
|---|---|---|---|
| Box | One arena floor, four one-hour slots | 4 | 4 × 7 = 28 |
| Field | Two fields, three slots each | 6 | 6 × 5 = 30 |
Capacity check, in total and by date. A box team plays once a Saturday, so one round is one Saturday.
| Division | Total check | Date check | Fits? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Box | 28 games, 28 slots | 7 rounds, 7 Saturdays | Yes. It fits exactly, so hold two more Saturdays as make-up dates |
| Field | 15 games, 30 slots | 5 rounds, 5 Sundays | Yes. Each round uses three of the six slots, so there is room for a make-up game on the same morning |
The plan in dates. Box: seven Saturdays of four games, plus two make-up Saturdays, so nine Saturdays in all. Field: five Sundays of three games, plus one spare Sunday, so six Sundays in all. The two seasons never share a date in this example, which keeps officials and families clear of clashes.
If the box division does not fit. Ten box teams need forty-five games and nine rounds of five, which does not fit four slots a Saturday. Three friendly fixes: ask the arena for a second floor window on the same day, add one weeknight floor slot, or split the division into two smaller divisions and play a shorter season in each. Decide before you publish, so families hear one plan.
Step 3
Check the draft before anyone sees it
Checklist: before you publish a lacrosse season
- Rounds counted against play dates, not just games against slots.
- Every box team plays at most one game a Saturday.
- No floor or field hosts two games at once, changeover included.
- The arena floor window and the field hours are confirmed, not assumed.
- Every team's unavailable dates respected.
- Early and late slots counted per team, and shared out by hand.
- Officials can cover every slot, back to back where possible.
- At least one spare date or spare slot held for a closure.
- A club with both divisions has no family booked into two places in one week.
Then give each club two days to review its own teams, fix what it finds, and publish once.
Step 4
Publish once, then move one game at a time
Publish where clubs, coaches, families and officials all look, and treat it as the only version. When a floor window shrinks or a field closes, move that one game into a free slot and tell everyone in it, officials included. An agreed weather and floor rule before the season makes those calls quicker and kinder.
Officials: plan the crew by space and by hour
Lacrosse games usually need a small crew of officials, and a box game and a field game need different setups. Plan by space and by time: a crew that stays on one floor or field for back-to-back games is easier to staff than one that moves. Send your assignor the draft before you publish, so they can check every slot is coverable.
Common planning traps
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Counting games, not play dates
A season can have plenty of slots and still be a date short, because a box round is one Saturday.
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Treating a weekly floor slot as permanent
A floor window can shrink for an arena event. Confirm it before you build, and hold spare dates.
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Filling every slot
With no spare date or spare slot, one closure moves a whole round.
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Forgetting the second division
A club with box and field teams can create a family clash that a single-division view never shows.
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Rebuilding after publishing
Re-running the season moves games that were fine. Move one game at a time.
In Play 2 Earn Sports
How Play 2 Earn Sports supports a lacrosse season
Play 2 Earn Sports keeps every team's floor, field and season in one view. See how the season schedule works in Play 2 Earn Sports, and for leagues the league scheduler builds the season from the inputs above.
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Floors and fields as they really are
Each venue and field has its own availability windows, a buffer between games and date-specific exceptions, such as a shorter floor window in a given week.
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Days and times the league sets
The league sets the allowed game days and the earliest start and latest end time.
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A round-robin draft
League auto-scheduling builds the season with round robin, divisions, home and away balance and team availability, and checks for field and team double-bookings. You review the draft before publishing.
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Blocked dates
Clubs can block holidays, closures and tournament weekends on their teams, venues and fields, and the scheduler keeps games out of those periods.
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Team preferences
Clubs can set each team's preferred days, start window, minimum rest hours and spacing. The scheduler weighs these as soft preferences, so it is still worth reviewing early and late slots by team.
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Published means protected
A published or locked schedule is not regenerated over. Moving one game runs the same clash checks, and a clear move shows "Game saved. No clashes found."
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Change notices
When a published, upcoming league game moves, a notice is queued for both clubs' staff, the affected coaches, the assigned referee with an account, rostered players and linked parents, and the team's existing chat gets an update. Email and push follow each account's settings. Notices reach linked accounts, so it helps to ask each family to link their account before the season.
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Officials
The league assigns a referee to each game. The picker checks the sport, the league's required level and the referee's unavailable days, and the referee accepts, declines or hands the game back. Today, Play 2 Earn Sports assigns the game's referee; your assignor builds the rest of the crew as they do now.
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Tournament days
Tournaments use round robin, groups or knockout formats. Use the free tournament maker for the event, and the free bracket generator for single-elimination brackets for 3 to 32 teams, with byes for the top seeds, and double-elimination brackets for 4 to 32 teams, with an optional reset game.
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Families and practices
Practices, RSVPs and team chat, in an app that installs from the website on iPhone and Android.
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The team's week
For a lacrosse coach: availability, lineups by unit and attendance, on the same schedule.
Lacrosse team app
See your lacrosse season built from your own floor and field hours.
Questions
Frequentlyasked questions
Decide first whether the division is box or field, because the space sets the season. Gather teams per division, your floor or field hours, your season dates and each team's unavailable dates. Turn the hours into slots, count rounds against your play dates, place the games, check the draft by team and by space, then publish once.
Yes, and many clubs do. Plan them apart first, using different spaces and different dates, then look at the whole club calendar for families who play in both. A short overlap check before publishing saves a season of small clashes.
Weather and shared fields shape a field lacrosse schedule: field slots are outdoors, often fewer, and they can be taken back by other sports or a closure. A box schedule is built on indoor floor hours booked one week at a time. Plan each division in the space it plays, then check the whole club calendar.
It follows from the number of teams. A single round robin with eight teams is twenty-eight games in seven rounds of four. With four one-hour slots on your floor window each Saturday, one round is one Saturday, so seven Saturdays plus two make-up dates. Add floor time only when you add teams.
Make the round robin pairings with the free round robin generator, for 3 to 32 teams. It runs in your browser with no account. To run the whole season on your real floor and field hours, with closures and game moves, use Play 2 Earn Sports.
Move the affected games to a make-up date or another space. When the league moves a game in Play 2 Earn Sports, the system checks the floor or field, both teams, blocked dates and season dates before it saves. Clubs that block known closures up front keep the scheduler out of those periods.
Start with the floor window, because the floor sets the season: the arena gives you the hours it has, usually after the ice comes out. Gather teams per division and those hours, choose the day and the number of games per slot, then count rounds against your play dates before you promise a season length.
Ask the arena when the ice comes out and when your hours may change, then treat each week as its own window. Build slots from the hours you hold, note the changeover the arena allows, and block the weeks a tournament or a school event takes. Hold one spare date.
It depends on your teams and your rounds. A single round robin with eight teams is 28 games in seven rounds of four, and two rounds is 56 games in 14 rounds. A ten-team division is 45 games in nine rounds of five. Count rounds against your play dates first.
Give the tournament its own weekend and keep league play dates out of it. Tournaments use round robin, groups or knockout formats, so settle the format and the number of entries first. Use the free tournament maker for the event, and a bracket generator for single-elimination play.
Yes, and they stay separate. Both are lacrosse leagues with their own venues, days and time windows. Run one league with two divisions, or two leagues; each keeps its own floor or field hours, its own allowed days and its own teams.
Today, the league assigns one referee to each league game, with sport, level and availability checks, and the referee accepts, declines or hands the game back. Your assignor builds the rest of the crew in the way they already do.
Starter is free for clubs with up to 10 teams. Pro is $49.67 USD a month for 11 to 25 teams. Unlimited is $99.67 USD a month for 26 or more teams. Every feature is on every plan, and players and parents are always included. For leagues, Starter is free for up to 10 clubs, League Pro is $97.85 USD a month for 11 to 25 clubs, and League Unlimited is $196.35 USD a month for 26 or more clubs. See pricing.
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