LITM’s Tennis Challenge Digitizes Its Way Forward

As our readers know, we’ve been running our Long Island Tennis Magazine Challenges for years, and until recently, these tennis and pickleball tournaments had been run manually using pen and paper, while not leveraging any tech tools.

Throughout the year, and most recently, during our Thanksgiving Tennis Challenge at SPORTIME Syosset, featuring four divisions of Men’s Doubles and Women’s Doubles, we decided to use the iPlayMe2 app-centric platform to see what more it could do, how it could ease administration, and deliver a better player experience, during and after the tournament.

iPlayMe2 easily handled the set-up of all the rounds, allowing us to quickly schedule the doubles teams matches, noting for everyone what start-time, and court number, for each of the “pool play” matches, basically a type of round-robin. Players were automatically notified via e-mail, and text, of their matches, confirming on which court to play, at what time, and against whom.

Those players already on the free iPlayMe2 app were able to enter their match scores directly after every round, and then move on to their next match. Other players, who hadn’t downloaded the app, simply reported the scores to us at the Tournament Desk, where we entered their match scores in seconds.

The group play standings were kept up to date, and allowed us to quickly see after the morning’s group play, which teams advanced to the knock-out stage. Those brackets were also quickly generated, and updated on the fly, allowing every team, and the visitors, to see from the external TV monitors, who plays against whom, when, and on which court. And which teams within each group began to pull away from the others.

At the end of an enjoyable afternoon, the brackets had been filled out, scores entered, and overall division winners declared.

iPlayMe2’s tournament manager function includes a private URL (website) which displays all the group rounds, and knock-out stage brackets, easily accessible by viewers, and even printable if desired.

Michelle Stoerback, an Adult Tennis Director at SPORTIME and co-tournament director of the LITM Challenge Series, loved this “cool tech” solution, and sees iPlayMe2 as a great tool to use to run tournaments as it allows the players themselves to self-schedule their matches, when mutually convenient at the club, and then self-report the match scores, especially if the competition spans a longer time-period than just a day.

Michelle shared her interesting take about leveraging iPlayMe2’s app-centric solution:

“With smartphones in everyone’s hands and the rise of remote work, schedules have become more flexible yet less predictable,” said Stoerback. “When iPlayMe2 introduced us to their self-scheduling tournament software—designed to be app-centric and player-focused—we couldn’t resist exploring what they had to offer.”

iPlayMe2’s club admin portal cranked out the Pool Play groups, and then the knock-out positions, seeded those elimination brackets, with players then seeing on their app, the specific draws, and receiving e-mails, and/or texts, about whom their first round or next round opponent is.

By using iPlayMe2, players can stay ‘old-school’, messaging each other to coordinate when to play, while others will embrace this innovative app, by efficiently accepting or countering each other’s propositions on when to play at our club, all through the iPlayMe2 player app. Eventually, member-players will be jumping on the app, and making short work of the scheduling headache of offering convenient play times that suited their personal schedules.

iPlayMe2 built this app to be as easy as ordering up an Uber… tap, swipe and a click.

Members will love entering their own scores, particularly when they won.  And club staff will save incredible amounts of time; iPlayMe2’s tournament brackets are always fully up-to-date, and visible to all of the members through the club’s private page within iPlayMe2’s eco-system.

iPlayMe2 also handles flex leagues, round-robins, traditional club championships, as well as can generate player rankings / ratings across the entire club. It even handles Compass Draw type tournaments, double-elimination formats, and simple “back-draw” formats, for those first-round losing players. iPlayMe2 has integrated all other racquet sports as well, including of course pickleball, padel, and beach tennis to name just a few.

Michelle summed it up:

“iPlayMe2 is incredibly user-friendly. It took just minutes to set up our group play and transition into elimination ‘knock-out’ rounds. The platform handles everything seamlessly, from organizing matches to creating brackets and even updating scores in real time for players to track. Some participants now think I’m a genius—but I can only take half the credit. Thanks, iPlayMe2, for making it all so easy!”