Advertising and registrations

Creating an iSquash tournament

To begin advertising your tournament, and let people register, you have to create a tournament on iSquash, and there is a whole manual available for that. Let us focus in the following on the tricks and peculiarities not described therein.

Here is a bit of detail for the different form fields you have to fill in when creating a tournament:

Field	Notes
Code	Can be anything, often similar to squash code, e.g. WNTHSNCTY
Name	What shows up in the tournaments listing. 40 characters
Description	Sort of visible when registering, later visible when draws are published
Detail	This is where you advertise all there is to know before registration. See below.
Locations	All the clubs where this tournament will be played at
Organiser	The person who will receive questions etc.
Dates	Usually Friday & Saturday/Sunday, but should be moved to Thu/Wed accordingly
Start advertising	Today's date, or maybe a date in the future
Last reg. day	After this day, the tournament will no longer be visible for registrations
Scope	Limits who can register, usually "Open"
Fees	See below
Tournament in progress	"Child-safety" to prevent accidental changes
Show tournament	Shows tournament as soon as the last reg. day has passed
T&C	See below.

Once you hit "save", and as soon as the "start advertising" date is reached, people can register for your tournament on iSquash, and you can manually add players too (they will not get notified about this…).

Detailed description

Put anything you want in here, but consider including information such as:

• What is this event?
• Who can register?
• When does it finish, and what can players expect?
• Specific rules, i.e. double-dot & PAR11 also for C-graders, or even everyone
• Remarks for local players ("may be required to play Wed/Thu")
• Accomodation offers

One other thing you might want to mention here is how welcoming you are to player restrictions. We all lead busy lives, no question, and it's usually not a problem if a player cannot play before 8pm on Friday, or not at all on Thursday (like all remote players), but if people start to "prefer an early game", or have multiple restrictions, your life will get exponentially harder with the number of balls you're trying to juggle. It's not uncommon for tournament directors to mention in the description that only one restriction or preference will be honoured.

It's possible to do a bit of basic formatting using the web page editor, but if you want to do this properly, write it up in a text editor, and then copy-paste it into the field. This way, you can even insert images, provided they reside on some publicly-accessible URL to which you link.

Tournament fee

Entry fees for tournaments in NZ are generally $35 or $40, which gets used for expenses, towards the prize money, as well as food following the prize-giving (unless the community provides that).

Generally, people are good at paying their fee on site. Over time, people have come up with a number of ways to make this even more likely:

• Early-bird fees, including paying before their first game
• Providing bank account details (requires consolidation…)
• Using iSquash to collect payment (reduces the number of people registering just to reserve a spot)
• Punishing the last person to pay
• …

Where there is a Juniors division, Juniors are usually charged a lot less (and their prizes are a lot lower).

Also, if you want to attract families, consider offering a family entry fee.

It is possible to consider charging e.g. $50 for a tournament, if players get more than the usual out.

Terms & Conditions

Anything you want to put in here that you want your players to abide by (though nobody reads this anyway). Here is a standard text:

You have to be double-vaccinated to register. If you pull out after the draws have been made, you will be charged the entry fee, though we're happy to waive in the case of special circumstances. Game scores will be reported to iSquash for all games. Please report to TC no later than 15 minutes before your game, and mark/ref the game after yours. You must comply with all Thorndon Health & Safety requirements and the Squash Wellington Code of Conduct while attending this event. If you have any questions please contact our Club Manager.

Posters & spreading the word

It's a good idea to create a poster for your event, and send it to the other clubs for display, as not everyone stays on top of events appearing on iSquash. So if you get a poster sent to you, please print it and hang it up, too.

The poster should be catchy, and include at least:

• The event name
• What is this tournament (e.g. "Open")
• When?
• Where?
• Cost, and how to register
• What to expect (dinner) and bring (costumes…?)
• Contact details
• Sponsor logos

If your players often travel to other clubs, make sure they take some printouts with them.

Colour printing can be done quite easily at e.g. the Warehouse Stationary.

Keep a watch

From now on, it's a good idea to check your registrations every couple of weeks, then days, because at some point, you'll have to close registrations.