Rest days
A rest day is a full calendar day with no game for that team. The audit finds each gap between a team's games, then compares averages across the league. If one team averages 3.4 days of rest and another averages 1.2, that gap shows up as a rest-day imbalance.
Short-rest games back-to-back are flagged separately. One Saturday-Sunday pair might be fine for adults but rough for a U10 team that needs Sunday off.
Time slots
Early slots are anything before your early cutoff, default 10 AM. Late slots are anything at or after your late start, default 6 PM. The audit counts how many early and late games each team plays, then looks for teams stuck on one side.
If your league has field lights, you may want to swap some late games onto the prime field rather than the unlit east diamond.
Field rotation
The checker counts how many games each team plays on each field. If four teams share Field A and Field B, but one team gets nine games on Field A while another gets only two, that shows as a field imbalance.
Some leagues intentionally anchor a team to one home field. In that case, compare teams only within the same group.
Common mistakes
- Scheduling the same team in the opening slot every week because the scheduler started there and never shifted.
- Stacking a team's games on the same field every week, which can look like favoritism even when it was just convenience.
- Forgetting that tournament weekends compress rest days and then returning to a normal pattern right after.
- Mixing date formats like 6/3/2026 and 2026-06-03 in the same sheet, which the parser can struggle with.
- Leaving bye weeks out of the game list, which makes rest-day averages look better than they really are.
Scenario walkthrough
Imagine a 10-team youth baseball league playing two games per week across three fields. The volunteer scheduler fills Field A first every Saturday because it has lights. By week six, the two teams that always land on Field A have played seven of their ten games there, while two other teams have never had a prime-time slot.
Run the audit after week four and you will see the field rotation score drop before parents start asking questions. Swap two Field A games to Field C on weeks five and six, re-run the audit, and you will see the field score recover without touching the rest-day balance.
What to double-check
- Facility blackout dates that remove a field from play for one weekend.
- School breaks that make evening slots harder for some age groups.
- Referee availability, since swapping a game to a new slot without a ref just moves the problem.
- Bye weeks and makeup dates, because a single makeup game on a Tuesday can erase someone's rest-day buffer.
Assumptions
This audit treats every game as a single date. Doubleheaders count as two games on the same day. It does not know about game length, travel time, or field setup. If your league has 60-minute and 90-minute games, rest-day balance matters more for the longer ones.
Sharing and saving
Use "Save draft" to store the current teams and games in your browser. Use "Copy share link" to send a read-only version to another organizer. The link encodes the schedule in the URL, so avoid putting player names or contact information there.
Exports are plain text and CSV, which open in any spreadsheet app. Print the Fixes page to bring to a scheduling meeting.
Comparing fair vs. unfair schedules
| Pattern | Fairer schedule | Less fair schedule |
|---|---|---|
| Rest days | Every team averages 2.4 to 2.8 days | One team averages 3.6, another 1.1 |
| Time slots | Early/late counts within 1 of each other | Top team has 8 early games, bottom team has 0 |
| Field use | Each team gets 35-40% of games on the best field | One team gets 80% of games on the best field |
| Back-to-backs | Shared across the league | Concentrated on two teams |