How to run a fixed-partner league on Pickleheads

Fixed-partner leagues are perfect for players who want consistent teammates and a little more competition each week. If you’re already running regular play, a league is a simple way to level up — without adding more work.

It’s pretty simple. Each week, you:

Our spreadsheet handles everything else for you. Prefer rotating partners? There’s a rotate-partner version of this template too.

When you’re ready, begin by downloading the Pickleheads Fixed-Partner League Template.

To get the most out of your league, you’ll want to do a little prep work. Start here.

1) Pick a season length

Six to ten weeks works great for most groups, but our league format lets you run up to 12 weeks. In the template, you’ll see one tab per week — delete weeks as needed.

Fixed partners feel more competitive than rotate-partner play. Keep weekly play simple: either a straight round robin among teams, or split into pools (A/B) and run round robins inside each pool so everyone gets several games.

2) Decide on scoring and tie-breakers

In the “Settings” tab, you can choose from a few different options on how to rank your teams and declare an ultimate winner. We recommend choosing winning percentage as your primary sort, so a team can miss a week without falling off the map.

But you can also decide to go with point differential to reward teams winning handily, or overall wins to prioritize people who show up week in and week out.

3) Set up your sessions

Fixed-partner leagues on Pickleheads run under the Pool Play format each week. If you want to run a mini-tournament with a bracket at the end, that’s totally up to you.

You’ll create a new session for every night of league play. It’s a good idea to set them all up from the start, so players know what to expect and can add them to their calendars. The more structure you give them, the more likely they are to show up on time and ready to play.

To save time, make sure all the teams in the league have joined the sessions on Pickleheads. You can always uncheck any last-minute cancellations before the event starts.

If you’re collecting fees for court time or organizing, Pickleheads payments make that simple.

With that behind you, you’re ready to hit the courts.

The Pool Play round robin will automatically generate matchups to keep things moving. At the end, you have the option to turn the evening into a mini-tournament – feel free to do that to add a little excitement each week. The league format can handle that just fine.

When play wraps, you’ll see the option to export the results from the Pickleheads app. It will be emailed to you as a spreadsheet file.

Open up your league spreadsheet and find the right week. Paste the results directly into cell A2. The league template is set up to use those results to generate instant standings.

You’ll do the exact same thing every week of your league. Just make sure you’re pasting the results into the correct week tab, you’ll be set.

Heads up: If a pair’s team name or ID changes across weeks, the “Conflicts” tab flags it so you can standardize names/IDs and keep season stats clean.

Every time you add in more results, the “Standings” tab updates automatically. Screenshot it and post in your session chat the same night.

If you want, you can adjust the standings settings to different factors. The spreadsheet will instantly update with the new standings.

A fixed-partner league is a little bit more complicated than the rotate-partner version. As an organizer, you might run into a few of the following scenarios.

If you want a real league without heavy admin, this is the easy way. Let us know how we can help. And good luck!