Regular season length
| League | Season |
|---|---|
| Underdog (Seattle) | 6 weeks plus 2 playoff weeks |
| Volo | 7 regular weeks plus 1 playoff week |
| DC Fray | 6 to 8 weeks |
| CLUBWAKA | About 8 weeks, one night a week |
| Sportskind (Denver) | 7 regular season matches |
| Phil Dalhausser BVA | 9 weeks |
| CCA Sports | 6 weeks |
Seven or eight weeks is the sweet spot for most groups: long enough that the standings mean something, short enough that people sign up again.
Build in a weather week
Outdoor leagues lose nights to rain and lightning. A common practice is to leave open weeks in the calendar for makeups, often one mid-season and one before the playoffs. A season with no slack either loses matches for good or pushes the playoffs back. See rainouts and makeups.
Who makes the playoffs
Leagues split three ways:
- Everyone. Volley Life and Phil Dalhausser BVA put every team in, seeded on the regular season. The season decides seeds, not who goes home.
- Top teams only. Underdog notes the bottom few seeds might not qualify.
- Not guaranteed. DC Fray makes no promise.
In adult rec, everyone-in is the friendliest default. A cut is a choice to make on purpose, and to publish before week one.
How many nights the playoffs take
Most leagues finish the playoffs in one or two nights. Volo plays a single-elimination bracket in one night. Volley Life and Underdog use the last two weeks.
The maths is simple. A single-elimination bracket of N teams has N minus 1 matches. Divide by how many matches you can run in a night (courts times start times) and round up, remembering that a team cannot play two matches at once, so later rounds wait on earlier ones.
Example: 16 teams, 2 courts, 2 start times a night. That is 15 matches at 4 per night, which is four nights. Nobody wants four playoff nights. Two fixes, and most leagues use both:
- Play back to back. Teams play more than one match on a playoff night.
- Add start times on playoff nights only. A third and fourth slot on two courts gets 16 teams through in two nights, with the finalists playing up to three matches on the last night.
A sensible default
Seven regular weeks, one weather week, everyone makes the playoffs, and the bracket finishes in one or two nights with extra start times on those nights.
How Sideout handles it
Sideout's league setup builds the whole season on your nights, courts and start times, holds up to three rain makeup nights, lets every team or the top teams from each division into the playoffs, and adds extra start times on playoff nights only. See how leagues work in Sideout.