How to Create a Double Elimination Volleyball Tournament Schedule

Double elimination tournaments are usually played for any or all of these three reasons: To give more teams the chance to win a prize, to lengthen the amount of play for every team and to avoid fluke losses by a superior team. Major sports like college basketball play single-elimination tournaments, but double-elimination tournaments are common in sports like volleyball.

Instructions

    • 1

      Decide how many teams to include in the tournament. The easiest and most common double-elimination tournaments are even-numbered and equal to a power of two, such as eight, 16 and 32.

    • 2

      Draw horizontal lines of about 2 inches in length down the left side of a piece of paper for the number of teams in the tournament. For example, if you have eight teams, draw one 2-inch horizontal line at the top left of the page. Draw another about an inch below it, another an inch below that one, and so forth, until you have eight. These are the blanks in which you will write the names or identifiers of your team.

      Just across the halfway point of the page horizontally, draw half the same number of blanks down the page in the same manner. For instance, if you have eight teams in the tournament, you will draw those eight blanks down the left side, and then draw four in the same way just across the halfway point. The lefthand blanks will become the winners bracket and the righthand blanks will be the losers bracket.

    • 3

      Write team names or identifiers in each of the blanks on the lefthand side. Then draw 2-inch lines to the right and between each two blanks for the winner of the game. For instance, the first team at top will play the second team. The winner's name will be put at right. The third team will play the fourth and the winner's name will be put at right.

    • 4

      Draw blanks to the right and between these second sets of blanks as well for the winners of the second round of games. Thus the winner of the game between 1 and 2 will play the winner of the game between 3 and 4.

      Continue to make marks to the right until only one blank is needed for the winner of the final game on the winners side.

    • 5

      Do the same with the losers side of the page. It will contain half as many blanks as the winners side.

    • 6

      Once the first round of winners games is played and the winners names are written in the spaces at right, transfer the losers names to the blanks on the losers side. For instance, if team 2 lost to team 1, team 1's name stays on the winners side and team 2's name goes on the top blank on the losers side.

    • 7

      For the championship, the final team on the lefthand side of the page--the only team to have won all of its games--will play the final team from the losers side--the only team that has lost only one game. The team that has lost one game needs to beat the first team twice in order to win the championship. Otherwise, the first team takes the title. In other words, if team 1 is the last team left on the winners side, and team 2 is the last team on the losers side, they play. Team 2 must win one game to make them even in losses and then another to win the title.