It started with one court and a group of friends

1. 1

   Working it out in someone's head

   We're a group of friends who book a court every week, usually four to seven of us and sometimes eight. We wanted everyone to partner everyone over the session, and nobody to sit out much more than anyone else. With four players that's easy. With more, someone has to remember who sat out and who has played together, while everyone else waits.

2. 2

   So we wrote a shuffle

   One of us writes software, so the others asked for something that would work it out for us. The first version was a simple tool. It knew who was there, who had sat out and who had partnered whom, and it picked the next game.

3. 3

   Then we kept adding to it

   Once the rotation was sorted, we kept going: stats at the end of each session, a club ranking, player pages, achievements, and a live view so everyone could see who was on and who was next. Seasons run for two months, and the best player of each season keeps a permanent award.

4. 4

   What we didn't expect

   People started checking their stats during the week and teasing each other about the standings. More people turned up, not because anyone asked them to, but because there was something going on that they were part of.

5. 5

   One person can run it

   From the start we wanted one person to be able to run the whole thing. Create a club, add players by name, start a session, end it, and everyone has stats. Players can make their own account later and link it to their name if they want to follow along.

We still play every week with the same group. RankedCourt now covers badminton and padel, and we still build it the same way: fix whatever gets in the way during a real session.