One Tournament, 125 Games: A Worked Referee Schedule, Step by Step

The tournament

The numbers: 125 games across 8 categories, played on 7 courts in 24 rounds. Every 3x3 game has two referees. There are 18 referees, each with a level: Gold, Silver or Bronze. Nobody may work more than two rounds in a row.

Most coordinators start by filling the first round and working forward. That is the mistake. Before you assign anyone, you need to know whether the day is possible at all, where it is tight, and what happens when something goes wrong. That takes five checks.

Step 1: count the slots

125 games with two referees each is 250 referee slots. Divided over 18 referees, that is 13.9 games per referee on average. In practice: 16 referees work 14 games and 2 work 13.

This number is your fairness baseline. A referee who ends the day on 9 games or 18 games is a sign that something in the plan went wrong, not bad luck.

Step 2: check capacity under the rest rule

With at most two rounds in a row, a referee works two rounds, rests one, and repeats. Over 24 rounds that is at most 16 games per referee. The average of 13.9 fits, with a margin of about two games per person.

Now look per round. 125 games over 24 rounds is 5.2 games per round, so about 10.4 referees on court. Because each referee can work only two out of three rounds, on average only 12 of the 18 are available in any round. The margin is 1.6 referees per round. That is tight.

And the average hides the peaks. A round with all 7 courts in use needs 14 referees. That only works if the rounds around it are quieter, so referees who work the peak have rested just before it. Spread the full rounds out over the day; never place two full rounds back to back.

Step 3: levels and trickle-down

For this example, take 5 Gold, 6 Silver and 7 Bronze referees, with 2 Gold categories (30 games), 3 Silver categories (45 games) and 3 Bronze categories (50 games). The split is illustrative; the method is not.

Gold games need 60 slots and only Gold referees may take them. Five Gold referees at about 14 games give 70 slots, so 10 Gold slots trickle down to Silver games. Silver games need 90 slots: 10 from Gold plus 84 from the six Silver referees gives 94, so 4 trickle down again, to Bronze. Bronze needs 100 slots: 4 from above plus 98 from the seven Bronze referees. Everything fits, with 2 spare.

Two things follow. First, the top level is your bottleneck: with only 4 Gold referees, Gold games alone would need 15 each, close to the maximum of 16, and nobody could rest beyond the minimum. Second, trickle-down should be small and deliberate. If Gold referees take far more Silver games than the arithmetic requires, Silver referees lose games they need.

Step 4: plan the finals

Eight categories means eight finals and 16 final slots. If no referee works more than one final, 16 of the 18 referees get one. That is a good outcome, and it only happens if you plan finals before the rest of the late rounds fill up.

The two Gold finals need four different Gold referees out of five, and those four must have rested in the round before. So plan the finals first, then build the late rounds around them.

Step 5: stress-test the plan

A schedule that only works when everyone shows up is not a schedule. Run the numbers for absences before the day. One referee missing: 250 slots over 17 referees is 14.7 each, still under 16. Two missing: 15.6 each, which works on paper but leaves almost nobody any rest beyond the minimum. Three missing: 16.7 each, which is impossible under the rest rule.

So for this tournament the answer is clear: you can absorb two absences, and a third forces a decision. Either some games get a single referee, or the consecutive limit is raised for that day. Make that decision with the referee committee before the tournament, not at 14:00 on court 4.

Late arrivals count too. Two referees who are only available for the second half of the day can work at most 8 games each. The other 16 then carry 234 slots, 14.6 each. It still fits, but the margin shrinks to 1.4 games per person.

Then, and only then, place names

After these five checks you know the targets per referee, the tight rounds, the level bottleneck, the finals plan and your tolerance for absences. Placing names is now the easy part: go round by round, give each slot to the referee furthest below their target at the right level, and rotate partners and categories.

This is exactly what the RefManager 3x3 autofill does. It works out each referee's target from their availability, respects the level ceiling, the rest rule and the one-final limit, and shows a fairness score and any unfilled slots before you publish. For this tournament, that takes seconds instead of an afternoon, and when a referee drops out on the day, the same checks run again on the remaining rounds.