Tournament director, running
Run a world-class
ultimate tournament.
Most college tournaments are run by a sophomore who has never done it before, learning by getting it wrong in public. 175g is a tournament director that already knows — and does the work with you, from the first field email to the archive you hand the next TD.
How it works
You talk. It builds.
› we want to host something in late february, maybe 16 teams
Late February is inside the college regular season, so it can be sanctioned and count toward rankings. Sixteen teams needs eight fields over two days.
First real question: do you have fields, or is that still unknown?
› unknown. we usually practice on the rec fields
Then the person you need is the Facilities Coordinator at Campus Recreation — not the club sports office, which is where most teams start and lose three weeks.
I've drafted the first email. It leads with insurance and cleanup, because those are the two questions they were about to ask. Review it and I'll queue it.
✓ update_tournament · dates, division, teamTarget
✓ generate_timeline · 56 deadlines, 4 due this week
✓ draft_outreach · queued for your approval
One decision at a time. It records what you tell it, drafts what you need, generates the schedule, and ends every session telling you what is due next. Nothing sends without your approval.
Coverage
The whole tournament.
Dates and fields
Finds the weekend that survives the season window, competing bids, and finals. Then finds the person at campus rec or the parks department who actually controls the fields — by name.
Sanctioning and insurance
USA Ultimate sanctioning, certificates of insurance for the university, waivers, rosters, the medical plan, the weather plan. The paperwork that gates everything else.
Budget and bid fee
A real budget from the TD Manual's own categories, break-even at every attendance level, and a fee priced so two teams dropping doesn't come out of your pocket.
Teams
Target lists three times the size of your field, bid announcements, applications, a waitlist weighted toward local teams, and the payment chase you'd rather not do.
Sponsors and swag
Local sponsors for cash or product — 300 hungry athletes is the pitch. Discs, jerseys, Nalgenes, stickers, ordered before the lead time bites.
Format and schedule
USAU-compliant pools, published seeding tables, brackets, and the nine-rule tiebreak procedure. Regenerated in seconds when a team drops on Thursday.
Gameday
Score reporting from the field by Telegram, live standings, weather calls with a pre-decided degradation order, and the hour-by-hour runbook.
Memory
Every contact, vendor, cost, and mistake written down and handed to next year's TD. The thing college ultimate loses every four years.
Grounding
It isn't improvising.
Built on the USA Ultimate Tournament Director Manual and the UPA Manual of Championship Series Tournament Formats. Pools are seeded from the published tables rather than naive snaking, so bracket matchups don't repeat pool play. Nobody plays more than nine games in two days. Ties break by the nine-rule procedure, verified against the manual's own worked examples.
It also isn't theoretical. In 2001 the UPA — now USA Ultimate — brought its author out to headquarters to teach their staff the frameworks for organising tournaments at the professional level. Those frameworks went on to shape how a lot of local communities run their events. He also founded Don't Give Up the Disc, now in its 26th year and one of the best beach tournaments in the world.
175g is that quarter century of tournament directing, written down and handed to whoever is running yours.
Open source
Fork it. Improve it. Run your own.
175g is AGPL-3.0. Read the code, self-host it for your league, or send a pull request — the format engine and the tiebreak procedure especially deserve more eyes. If you run a modified version as a service, the licence asks that you share those changes back, so the next college hacker starts from your work rather than from scratch.