If you’re looking to juice up your weekly pickleball sessions, a league just might be for you. We’ve made it easy to run a league on Pickleheads, without needing a lot of extra software.
The process is pretty straightforward: You’ll run each week of your league as a round robin in Pickleheads, then use our custom spreadsheet to manage the standings. It’s as simple as copying and pasting your results in.
The sheet calculates season standings automatically. No tournament software, no custom macros — just your phone and this sheet.
The instructions below work for a rotate‑partner league, which delivers structure and better matchups while staying social. If you’re interested in a fixed-partner league, click here.
Ready? Get started by downloading the Pickleheads League Template.
Before you begin
Once you’ve got the spreadsheet copied, we recommend making a few important decisions before you start play.
1) Choose your season length
Pick the number of weeks you want your league to run. You can change it later, but it’s helpful to have a starting point. We recommend six to eight weeks as the sweet spot.
In your spreadsheet, make sure you have one tab per week. You can have up to a maximum of 12 weeks.
2) Choose your format
You can make any of our round robin formats work, but we recommend one of these:
- Popcorn: If you want a more casual, social feel, go with Popcorn. Partners and opponents get remixed every round and the night has an easy rhythm.
- Up & Down the River: If your crew leans competitive, choose this format. After each round (4-5 games), winners move up a court, losers move down a court, and partners split the next round.
Both work perfectly with rotate‑partner play and export a clean Results CSV.
3) Decide how you’ll score
Our league set-up gives you some options, which you can adjust in the “Settings” tab. You can choose to rank players by total wins, or total points, for example.
We recommend sorting by win percentage — it rewards consistency and lets someone miss a week without falling off the map.
You also have the ability to set secondary sort criteria, which is useful for tie-breakers. We like point differential here to reward players for dominant wins.
4) Set up your sessions
Every night of league play will be its own session. It’s a good idea to set them all up at this point, so your players know what to expect. That way people can put it on their calendar and make it a point to be on time.
We recommend putting all of your league players into a spreadsheet and bulk-adding them to each session. You can always uncheck them before the event if you have any last-minute cancellations.
If you need help setting up a session, here’s a guide. You can also choose to use Pickleheads payments to cover your costs – and your time.
How to run your league, step by step
With that behind you, you’re ready to hit the courts.
Step 1 – Run the first night with the round robin tool
We recommend keeping it simple: Go with timed 12–15 minute rounds to keep things moving, or stick with the first to 11 format. Either one works, but pick your rules once and stick with them.
Step 2 – Export the results CSV
When play wraps, you’ll see the option to export the results from the app. That file will be sent straight to your email inbox, and it’s your single source of truth for the week.
Step 3 – Paste into the matching week tab
Open your copy of the league template and navigate to the Week 1 tab. You can then copy and paste the results directly into cell A2.
You won’t need to touch the header row or reorder columns. Keep the Week X naming pattern so aggregation stays intact.
Step 4 – Share standings
The sheet rolls everything into the “Standings” tab. Screenshot and post in your event chat so players get feedback the same night.
Step 5 - Repeat the process
You’ll follow the same basic procedure each week. Just make sure you copy and paste the results into the correct tab, and you’re golden.
Step 6 - Use league standings for later weeks
Each week, the “Standings” tab will automatically update as you feed in more data. You can use the standings to seed later league rounds. Several of our formats, including Up and Down the River and Gauntlet, use seeds to generate initial matchups. League standings are a perfect way to do that.
Step 7 - Celebrate success
After you upload the results of the last league session, the “Standings” tab will display the winners. Time to celebrate!
Tips and tricks
- Make sure all of your league players are using the Pickleheads app. This will ensure that names stay consistent across weeks.
- If formulas get messed up, you can start fresh with a new copy of the spreadsheet. All of your previous CSV files will be in your email, or you can export them again.
- It’s OK to reorder your scoring and tie‑breakers mid-season. The spreadsheet will handle that seamlessly and re-sort instantly. Just tell your players!
- Keep players within a ~0.5 skill band for tight games.
Get started
If you’ve wanted a real league without drowning in admin, this is your path. Run the night in the app, paste the CSV, and let the template handle the standings—even on weeks you can’t be there.
