Running a tournament, one calm step at a time.

Hosting a tournament looks like a lot. It is really just five things, done in order: you set it up, you let coaches register, you sort everyone into rooms, you run the day, and you publish the results. The site walks you through those five things and keeps track of where you are, so you never have to hold the whole thing in your head.

Everything you do lives inside the Tournament Director console — one screen with a menu down the left side. You will spend the whole tournament there. The next chapter is a two-minute tour of that screen.

You do not need to memorize anything. Keep this guide open in another tab, or print it, and refer back when you hit a step you have not done before.

The menu on the left

The left sidebar is your table of contents for the tournament. It is split into three groups, and that split is the single most useful thing to understand:

• Operate — the things you do during the tournament: Dashboard, Entries, Judges, Schematics, Tabulation, Break Room, From coaches, Paperwork, Materials, and Status & Phases. On tournament day the Dashboard itself becomes the live console - there is no separate live page to find.
• Configure — the things you set up before the tournament: Setup, Homepage Builder, Tab room staff, and Preview as — a read-only look at your tournament through a coach’s, judge’s, or family’s eyes.
• Reports — printable lists and sheets you can pull any time: standings, room postings, judge assignments, billing, and more.

Menu items that are not useful right now are dimmed, not hidden. Early on, the setup items stand out; on tournament day, the day-of items do. A dimmed item is still one click away — the site is just pointing you at what usually matters next.

The row of stages across the top

At the very top you will see a row of five small labels: Drafted → Registration → Registration closed → Live → Results. That is your progress bar for the whole tournament. The highlighted one is where you are now. Click it any time to open the Status & Phases page, where you move forward to the next stage. Chapter 3 explains each stage.

The dashboard

Clicking the tournament name (top of the sidebar) or Dashboard brings you home. The dashboard is your at-a-glance status: what needs your attention, how many entries you have, and recent activity. When you are not sure what to do next, start here.

AI Console — experimental

Where:Operate › AI Console

A chat you can ask about the tournament, or tell what to change, in plain English — “which rooms have no judge?”, “drop Ada Chen and rebalance the round.” It is experimental: it always shows you exactly what it is about to do before it does anything real, and waits for your OK. Everyone on staff sees the same conversation. It cannot post a round or send anything on its own — those stay a deliberate, one-press human action, on purpose.

The “jump to” search

At the bottom of the sidebar is a Jump to… box (keyboard shortcut ⌘K on a Mac, Ctrl+K on Windows). Start typing the name of anything — an event, a page, “awards” — and it takes you straight there. This is the fastest way to move around once you know what you are looking for.

You change stage on the Status & Phases page (click the progress bar up top, or find it under Operate). Moving forward is a deliberate choice — with one exception. Going Live arms an automatic release for 9 PM on your last day: if every ballot is in when it fires, it finalizes the tournament and the results go out. You can pause or re-arm it any time on Status & Phases. Everything else waits for you, and you can always step back if you moved too soon.

Where:Configure › Setup

The Setup page is organized as a checklist down the left side — Tournament, Events, Schools, Rooms, Schedule, and a Codes status row. Each row shows a tick when it is done and a live count underneath. Click a row, fill in that panel, move to the next. There is no “save” button to hunt for — each field saves the moment you click away from it, and a small chip tells you it saved.

Tournament

The basics: the tournament name, date, venue, and your fees. As you type a fee, the panel shows you exactly how it will be billed, so there is no guessing. This is also where recent-graduate judges and other policy details live.

Events

The speech events you are offering — Prose, Poetry, Extemp, and so on. The fastest start is the one-click standard slate, which adds the fourteen MIFA events at once; then remove any you are not running. Original Poetry, Original Prose and Declamation are not in the slate — add those by hand if you are running that kind of meet.

Click an event and everything about it opens in one place: how many entries share a room, how many prelims, which elimination rounds — and, under Rules the judge reads, the level (high school or middle level), the time range, and the rules themselves.

You do not have to write any of that. Every MIFA event arrives with its official ballot already in it — what the event is, what a script or a costume may be, what the basis of decision is, and the time limits for both levels — and that is what your judges see. The boxes are there for the meets that differ: a house event of your own, or a time limit you are running differently on the day. Anything you leave empty stays MIFA’s. Clearing a box you filled hands the event back to MIFA.

Schools & Rooms

Schools is where competing schools appear once they enter. Two controls live on each school’s row: the sweepstakes division it competes in, and Trophies — flip that to “Sitting out” and the school is left off every team sweepstakes board, which is what most hosts do with their own team. Individual placements are unaffected. Rooms is your venue’s room inventory, and you can pool specific rooms to specific events; the schematic editor then offers only that event’s pool, and the whole-tournament build can place its rooms for you. An event with no pool keeps the room choice with you.

Schedule

The start time of each round. If the whole day slips (a late start, a weather delay), there is a shift everything control so you do not have to edit each round by hand.

Codes

Every competitor gets a short anonymous code (like F3) — a school letter and a number — so judges never see names or schools while ranking. The site assigns these automatically. When your roster is final, you can lock the codes so they stop changing — do this once, right before you build rooms.

Your public tournament page

Where:Configure › Homepage Builder

This is the page coaches, families, and competitors land on. You edit it by clicking directly on the real page and typing — a welcome message, the schedule, directions, anything you want. Blocks you are not using wait in the bank beside the page: drag one on to add it, drag one off to put it back, and nothing in it is lost. The bank also holds new Text, Image, Social post and Embed code blocks, as many as you like.

You are always editing a draft. Nothing you type is public until you publish, and when you do, the site shows you exactly which parts changed before it goes live. Starter templates and a “paste your info letter and let the site lay it out” helper are there if you want a head start.

Sharing the work: Tab room staff

Where:Configure › Tab room staff

You do not have to run a tournament alone. Tab room staff lets you invite co-directors and helpers by email. They get access to the same console, so someone can be entering paper ballots while you handle the room postings. On the day itself, the console even shows you when a teammate is editing the same thing you are, so you do not step on each other.

Going public

When your setup is ready, open Status & Phases and press Open registration. Two things happen at once: your page goes on the public calendar, and coaches can start entering students. The confirm tells you exactly when registration will close.

Your tournament page always tells visitors where registration stands — open until a date, closed, or being seated — so a coach never has to ask whether they can still enter.

Entries come to you

Where:Operate › Entries

Head coaches register their own students from their side of the site, so most entries arrive without you lifting a finger. The Entries page is the master list of every competitor: their code, school, event, and name. You can search it, sort it, and edit a cell right in place.

You can also add an entry yourself — handy for a phone-in from a coach who is having trouble. And you can Drop a competitor who withdraws (with an option to waive the drop fee), Restore one who changes their mind, or Delete a plain mistake.

Closing registration

Registration closes itself. A new tournament is set to close at 3:00 PM Michigan time on the Tuesday before the meet; change the time in Setup (The Tournament), or choose I’ll close registration myself and press Close registration on Status & Phases when you are ready. Either way nothing is lost — it simply stops new entries so you can build rooms against a stable roster. This is the natural moment to lock your codes (Chapter 4).

Where:Operate › Judges

Building your judge pool

The Judges page is your roster of judges. Coaches can send the judges their school is bringing, and you can invite more by email. For each judge you can record:

• Which rounds they are available for (checkboxes).
• Preclusions — schools or students they must not judge (usually their own school; the site already blocks that, but you can add more).
• Hired — mark a paid/neutral judge who is not tied to any one school.
• Part-day availability — if a judge can only stay until noon, record it, and the site will not seat them in a later round.

The Materials locker

Where:Operate › Materials

Four events hand a competitor their material at the tournament rather than asking them to bring one — Extemp, Impromptu, Broadcasting and Duo Commentary. Whatever your prep room hands out, put it in the Materials locker: question sets, prompts, broadcasting copy. While the meet is running only the tab room can open it, and only the people you gave the Materials box to.

When you release the results, the locker opens with them, and the schools that competed can read what was actually asked — which is what a coach needs to practise against next week. If you mean to use a question bank again, tick keep this one back on that file and it stays in the locker when everything else goes out.

This is a locker, not a prep room. It does not run the draw, time anybody, or decide who gets which question; that is a separate job and it is not built yet.

Judges without an account: QR folders

Where:Reports › Printable judge QRs

Many volunteer judges are parents who show up on the day and do not want to make an account. For them, the site prints a folder per judge seat with a QR code and a short verification code. Once the round has started, the judge scans the code with their phone, types the number, enters their name, and fills out the official ballot — no login, nothing to install. (Before the round’s start time the folder politely says the round has not started yet.)

These folders exist automatically; there is no button to generate them. You can print all of them at once, or print, copy, email, or text a single one to a last-minute replacement judge. Their scores count exactly like everyone else’s.

Where:Operate › Schematics

A schematic is just the room-by-room plan for a round: which competitors are in which room, and which judge is with them. You build it in a drag-and-drop editor with three columns — the people waiting to be placed on the left, the room cards in the middle, and details about whatever you have selected on the right.

Let the site do the first pass

You almost never build a schematic by hand from scratch. Use the Fix it… tools to have the site sort competitors into balanced rooms and seat judges fairly — keeping judges away from their own schools, spreading them so no competitor sees the same judge twice, and honoring the availability you recorded. Then you tidy up by dragging the few things you want to change.

There is also a whole-tournament Equitable build on the dashboard. On a brand-new tournament it does the whole job in one pass: it creates the rounds and rooms that are missing, sorts every event’s competitors with school separation and balanced speaking positions, then seats judges across all events at once. Events you gave a room pool (Setup → Rooms) get their physical rooms placed too; events without one keep the room choice with you, because the site will not guess which room belongs to which event. One-click undo after — and it refuses once a round is live, because a student already walking to Room 214 cannot be warned.

Posting a round

A schematic is a draft until you post it. Before you do, a strip along the top checks the basics — everyone placed, every room has a judge, no conflicts — and warns you about anything unusual. It warns; it never blocks. When you post, the round goes up: judges see where they are sitting, and families see the room postings. The ballot itself unlocks at the round’s scheduled start time, so you can safely post the night before. If you need a ballot open sooner, there is an “open ballots early” switch on that round in the schematic editor.

What the public sees

Where:Reports › Room postings

The public schematic shows room assignments using those anonymous codes — never a student’s school, and their name only if you turn names on. On the Room postings page you control, per round, whether the public can see it at all. This is also where you print clean room-posting sheets to tape up around the building.

The Dashboard — your control tower

Where:Operate › Dashboard

Move to the Live stage and the Dashboard becomes the live console. This is the cockpit for running the tournament in real time: which rounds are running, which ballots are still out, what is overdue, and what needs you right now. When you feel the day start to move fast, this is the page to stand on.

Ballots submitted from judges’ phones show up here the moment they arrive. If a judge is filling out paper, you (or a teammate) type those scores in. If a judge does not show and you need to swap in another, you can reassign them right here.

Tabulation — the scores

Where:Operate › Tabulation

The Tabulation page is one big table per event — competitors down the side, each round a column, showing the rank and percentage each one earned. The field narrows as it advances, so the shape of the table mirrors the shape of the tournament.

Click any score to get two choices:

• Edit the ballot — open the full ballot to correct what a judge entered (or to key in a paper ballot).
• Override the score — set a rank and percentage directly for one competitor in one round, without touching the rest.

When a round’s scores are complete and checked, lock the round. A locked round turns read-only, so nothing changes by accident. If you need to fix something later, you can unlock it (the site asks you to confirm by typing).

Where:Operate › Break / advance

“Breaking” is the word for advancing competitors to the next level. The Break Room is where you say how many advance and send them on. It suggests a sensible number (commonly twelve to semis, six to finals), and you can change it.

The site seeds the next round from performance so far — for finals, it adds up how each competitor did across prelims and semis, so a strong semifinal round can move someone up the seed. It also lists alternates in order, so if a finalist withdraws you know exactly who is next.

You do not need to read this chapter start to finish. Skim the headings, and come back to the one you need when you need it. The common thread: the site handles the fallout (re-ranking, fees, alternates) so you make the human decision and it does the bookkeeping.

A student does not show up (no-show)

On the tabulation table, mark the empty spot as a no-show. The site re-ranks that room correctly without them. No math on your end.

A student is disqualified

From the Entries page you can disqualify a competitor for one round or the whole tournament, with a reason on record. You choose whether everyone else moves up or the disqualified competitor simply goes last, and you can reverse it. You also control whether they still appear in the public results.

A coach tells you something

Where:Operate › From coaches

A coach reaches this from their registration sheet for your meet, and most of what arrives is ordinary: a judge who has not turned up, a competitor on a phone, a school in the wrong room. You can answer it — your reply lands on their sheet — or mark it handled.

Occasionally one of them needs a review on the record, and that is your call, not theirs. A coach should not have to work out whether what they saw clears a procedural bar at nine on a Saturday morning, so they say what happened and you press Put this on the record. A coach can also ask for a review directly — it is a right under MIFA’s rules — from the same place, behind a line that says most messages need nothing more than an answer.

A school asks you to review something

Where:Operate › From coaches

Under the messages, the Administrative records section walks a case up the MIFA four-level ladder — from the initial review through the tournament committee — with a ruling recorded at each step. You are guided through it, not left to interpret the rulebook alone. Fixing standings after a review is upheld stays a manual step; the page keeps the case file.

Weather or a cancelled round

You can mark a round cancelled. The site leaves it and its ballots out of the standings and notes that results were computed on the rounds actually run. If the whole day slips, remember the shift everything control on the schedule.

The same student entered twice, or two rooms at once

The site warns you when a competitor is booked in two rooms at the same time, and offers a guided merge when the same student was entered twice. Both are caught for you rather than discovered at the podium.

Awards & sweepstakes

Where:Reports › Awards

This page computes it all: individual placements, the ratings that earn recognition, and the team sweepstakes totals that decide which school takes the trophy. If two schools tie for a trophy, it says so. You can set the cutoffs (how many finalists, the rating thresholds) and read out the ceremony order directly from here.

Ties in the standings

A tie means two competitors finished on exactly the same total. The site works down a fixed list of tiebreakers, in order, and stops at the first one that separates them. It never breaks a tie on its own: it shows you the answer and the reason it got there, and you record it.

Here is that list, written out, so nobody has to take it on trust.

Advancing out of the prelims

Who breaks to semifinals is decided on the prelims alone, and there are only two tiebreakers:

1. 1Total ranks across the prelims — lowest wins.
2. 2Total percentages across the prelims — highest wins.

Level after both, and they both advance. That is the rule, not a fudge — the Break Room says so and offers to take the whole tie, which makes the break one competitor larger.

Where somebody places

Final placement starts from total ranks across every round, prelims and elimination rounds together, lowest first. Two people level on that are tied, and these run in order until one of them separates:

1. 1Total ranks in the final round — lowest wins.
2. 2Judges’ preference in the final round — of the judges who ranked both of them, whichever competitor more of them placed higher.
3. 3Total percentages in the final round — highest wins.
4. 4Total percentages across every round — highest wins.

Level after all four and they genuinely share the place. That one is yours to settle — a coin flip is the usual call — and the site prompts you for it, records the order you chose and the method you used, and keeps the two together in the published result.

Two smaller things worth knowing. A tiebreaker with nothing to read is skipped, never guessed — before a final round has run, the three final-round tiebreakers simply do not apply and the cumulative one decides. And where a round counts for more than once — semifinals are doubled at the State Finals — the totals above already include that, while each judge column still shows the rank that judge actually gave.

Conclude, then finalize

When the last ballot lands, the Dashboard itself offers the closing sequence: a band that says the day is done, with a Conclude button right on it. Settle any tied trophy places first — the site will not let you conclude or finalize while a place is still shared. Concluding locks the places for awards and stops judges writing; families and coaches still see nothing. The Dashboard then becomes your awards runway — the ceremony slideshow, the printouts, and one big Finalize door.

Finalizing is the release. Type the short confirmation and results become official and public at their permanent web address, judge feedback goes to the coaches, and the tab sheet is saved as the tournament’s lasting record. The Dashboard becomes the celebration page — champions, sweepstakes, and the doors to everything. You can even finalize straight from Live if you never needed the Concluded stop.

Where:Reports (the whole group)

Click Reports in the sidebar to open the hub. Every report is a card with a one-line description, sorted into three groups by when you need it.

Morning print job

The first card is the Morning packet, and every part starts ticked: room postings, judge sheets with their QR folders, a registration and fee sheet per school, door signs, the day schedule and the code decoder. Untick anything you do not want this time, then press Print everything ticked once. Each part is also its own card underneath, for the day you want just one sheet:

• Room postings — every round’s rooms to tape up, plus what the public schematic shows for each round.
• Printable judge QRs — one folder per judge seat, grouped by event and round, from Chapter 7. Print one round’s folders, search for a judge or a room, or text a folder to a replacement judge.
• Judge folder sheets — the same paperwork cut by judge instead of by room: each judge’s whole day on one block, three to a page.
• Registration — a registration and fee sheet per school, with any notes coaches left you.
• Paper backup — the wifi-died kit: door signs, the day schedule, and the code decoder.

During the day

• Arrival desk — the morning roll call: schools and judges check in, and each school gets a what-changed sheet.
• Break postings — a poster per break round in the classic posting format: giant codes, last names only, one page per event even at quarters. Hang them by the tab room, or hand one to whoever draws the real posters.
• Tab reports — the standings, print-ready with a signature line. Use it for the interim picture during the day and the official sheet at the end.
• Awards — placements, sweepstakes, and the ceremony list.

Look up

• Roster — the read-only list of every entered student, with a spreadsheet download and a print button.
• Contacts — coach names, emails, and phone numbers, for when you need to reach a school fast.
• School matrix — how many entries each school has in each event.
• Who judges where — every judge, round by round, and the room they are in — and Judge coverage, which flags rooms with no judge before that becomes a morning problem.
• Activity — who changed what, and when.

At the foot of the hub, Promo poster makes a QR poster for your public page.

Entry

One student signed up for one event. A student in three events is three entries.

Code

The short anonymous label (a school letter plus a number, like F3) that stands in for a competitor so judges rank blind — no name, no school.

Section / Room

One group of competitors judged together in one room for one round.

Schematic

The full plan for a round: who is in which room, with which judge.

Posting a round

Making a round’s schematic visible — judges see their room, families see the postings. Until you post, it is a private draft. Ballots unlock at the round’s start time, not at posting.

Ballot

A judge’s scores for one room: a rank and a percentage for each competitor, plus written comments.

Prelims

The preliminary rounds everyone competes in before anyone advances.

Break / advance

Moving the top competitors up to semifinals or finals.

Sweepstakes

The team competition — schools earn points from how their competitors place, and the top total wins the trophy.

Locking

Freezing something (codes, or a round’s scores) so it stops changing. Reversible, with a confirm.

Conclude

Saying every ballot is in and the places are locked for awards. Judges stop writing. Nothing becomes public — that is Finalize.

Finalize

Declaring results official and public, releasing judge feedback to coaches, and locking the record. The finish line.

• Not sure what is next? Go to the Dashboard. It tells you what needs attention.
• Can’t find a page? Use Jump to… (⌘K / Ctrl+K) and type what you want.
• Afraid to click something? The irreversible steps — finalizing, unlocking — always ask you to confirm first. If it did not ask, you can undo it.
• Made a mistake? Check the Activity log to see exactly what changed, then fix it. Drops restore, rounds unlock, phases step back.
• Something looks wrong in the results? Concluded is your fixing window — nothing is public yet. But if the automatic 9 PM release is still armed it will finalize the meet on its own, so pause it on Status & Phases first, then fix what you found.